


Bruising the Sun

by especiallythezefronposter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Bruce Has Issues, Chronic Pain, College, Condoms, Cuddling & Snuggling, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Suicidal Thoughts, Recreational Drug Use, Scars, Sex, Slow Burn, Smoking, at least romantically it's a slow burn, many naps, these two spend more time taking care of each other than taking care of themselves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-12 23:13:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 63,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11747193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/especiallythezefronposter/pseuds/especiallythezefronposter
Summary: Tony and Bruce, all the way from day one.





	1. One-Time Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you may recognize this story. I posted two or three chapters at some point this year, but felt sort of uncomfortable with posting smut (since gay men are sort of fetishised on this site, and I don't really want to contribute to that) and just with where the story was going in general, so I deleted it. Right now I have 14 chapters that are pretty much ready go and way more chapters that I've got planned out, so, despite still being sorta uncomfortable with the smut, I feel like I'm not going to feel like deleting this again.
> 
> I'm posting the first chapter today, the next chapter will be up on Sunday and from then on I'm going to try and post a chapter every Sunday (I already set a reminder and everything).
> 
> This chapter is a sex scene, because there's not really a way to start this story without a sex scene, but there's going to be lots of angst and even some fluff ahead. 
> 
> **Warnings** for this chapter specifically are (underage) alcohol use and a part at the end that could be read as slight dubcon (if you need anymore info, hit me up at hungryface.tumblr.com).

'Look,' Tony says.

He sits down opposite Bruce at one of the on-campus picnic tables. Bruce looks up from his books to fix Tony with his most disinterested stare and waits for him to go away.

'Pepper told me you think I'm an entitled asshole who's wasting his talents on useless, elitist shit that's never going to help anyone and I don't necessarily agree, but I noticed you look like you have a big dick and might be rough in bed, so I was wondering if angry sex is on the table?'

Bruce looks at Tony for a moment, then stands and starts walking towards the parking lot. He hasn’t actually had sex in weeks and Tony really is the hottest guy on campus. This is probably the only good idea he’s ever had.

Bruce knows Tony isn't following. He can't hear his footsteps in the grass. He turns back momentarily to say 'Come on then,' and Tony is on his feet in less than a second.

'Oh,’ he says. ‘You're efficient. How nice. I was thinking we could go to the mansion outside town. It’s way cleaner than my apartment.'

'The Audi in the parking lot is yours?', Bruce asks, his way of saying ‘I don’t give a fuck where we go.’

'Yeah,' Tony sounds breathless. Bruce likes that that’s his doing.

Tony fumbles with his keys for a moment before the Audi’s headlights flash as it unlocks. They get in the car quietly. Tony’s cock is tenting his pants already. 

Bruce has a couple classes with him, and knows as well as anyone that Tony can’t stop talking for the life of him, but now he’s quiet, focused on the road and occasionally glancing over to Bruce as if to make sure he’s still there. 

He doesn’t go over the speed limit once before they leave town, but he’s a good driver, and he’s assertive enough that it doesn’t take them a whole lot of time. Then there’s the quiet of the suburbs, which always look strangely empty to Bruce. There’s nothing here that can distract him.

Bruce is thinking of fucking Tony raw and of the two digit number in his bank account, which will soon become a one digit number, then a negative one, and of the physics paper he got a D for, which really fucking isn’t enough and he can’t fail any of the papers due next week and he hasn’t even gotten started on most of them and Tony must look so good naked and panting. 

There’s only two ways he can think at all: of one thing, obsessively, no room for anything, or of everything at once, cars in parallel lanes driving so fast it makes him feel a little sick sometimes. Bruce reaches, slowly so that Tony has some warning, for Tony’s cock and squeezes it through his pants so that it doesn’t go soft. Tony gasps and the car speeds up.

The mansion is one of those you drive past sometimes, impressed by its size but aware that this is something of another world, one not for regular people. Bruce is almost surprised when they turn onto the long, tree-lined driveway and stop in front of it. Mansions are so far away from his 47$-in-his-bank-account life that it had never really occurred to him that there’s something behind the overly large front door, that he’d ever get to see what it is.

He squeezes Tony’s cock again when Tony opens the door to leave the car and his other hand goes to Tony’s throat. He isn’t sure about this, about what Tony wants exactly, but the way Tony gasps when Bruce squeezes slightly tells him he’s at least going in the right direction.

‘Fuck,’ Tony murmurs when Bruce lets go of him to get out of the car himself. Between the lane and the front door is an elegant front lawn with two paths to the door and a large planter in the middle, with palm trees and blooming flowers in it.

‘I’d love to fuck you on that fucking planter. Get your back all dirty,’ he murmurs to Tony. They’re walking so close that their shoulders are pressed together. Bruce can feel the heat of Tony’s skin through his clothes.

Tony gasps and palms his own cock with one hand as he feels for a key in his pocket with the other. ‘No one’s home,’ he says. ‘You can have me anywhere you fucking want.’

He unlocks the door while Bruce slips a hand under his shirt and pinches a nipple, which makes Tony’s breathing stutter. He goes straight for the kitchen once they’re inside and Bruce follows him to a bar on which a bunch of bottles are displayed. ‘There’s um – a lot of scotch and some brandy. You want any?’

‘You want me to fuck you while I smell of daddy?’, Bruce asks as he inspects the bottles, which are too old and exotic for Tony to have bought at any point in his life.

‘Gross,’ Tony says. ‘Rum?’

Bruce nods as Tony pours both of them a couple fingers. Tony drinks half of glass, Bruce all of his own. Tony tops up and then goes for the stairs with his glass in hand, taking the bottle, too. Bruce is glad to be walking behind him. Most days his limp is pretty much invisible, but he can never quite hide it while walking up stairs.

‘There’s lube and condoms in most of the bedrooms,’ Tony says, almost like he’s calm, as they climb the stairs. ‘And high thread count silk sheets. I think the third guestroom has the largest bed.’

‘Let’s head over there,’ Bruce says, taking another sip of his rum.

Tony leads the way to the guestroom and sets his glass and the bottle on the bedside table before opening a window. The room only smells a little of dust, but Tony seems to like the fresh air.

‘You gonna lay down for me?’, Bruce murmurs. ‘With all of your clothes off.’ He fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. ‘Can I smoke?’

Tony nods and starts to undress. Bruce kicks off his shoes, his pants and his boxers, but keeps on the university sweater he’s wearing. It hides the worst of Bruce’s scars. There’s plenty on his upper legs, too, but he can live with Tony seeing those. If Bruce reads him well he won’t be paying any attention to details for the next couple of hours anyway. 

He lights a cigarette and only joins Tony on the bed when Tony’s fully undressed. It’s good that Bruce’s wearing contacts today. Glasses always get in the way.

Tony’s staring at his scars, but looks away from them when Bruce leans in to blow smoke into his mouth and doesn’t comment on Bruce keeping on his sweater. Tony has scars, too, on his arms and over his ribs. The middle of his chest is a mess of pale, uneven scar tissue that was obviously caused by something bad and messy. Bruce has no idea what it’s from. He’s heard all kinds of rumours, but any of them could be true.

Bruce finishes his cigarette by blowing each drag into Tony’s mouth, occasionally using his other hand to massage Tony’s balls.

Tony’s gasping and rock hard already when Bruce puts out his cigarette against the outside of his glass and starts to suck on Tony’s nipples. Tony moans loudly, gripping Bruce’s hair with both hands.

This is the kind of shit Bruce is desperate for, Tony’s moans, his gasps, the way his muscles clench and relax. Any obvious sign of pleasure. There’s nothing that turns Bruce on as much as someone who enjoys sex intensely.

He sucks his way to Tony’s cock, taking the skin of Tony’s belly between his teeth occasionally. He only bites hard enough to leave marks when Tony encourages him. He puts his hands on the back of Bruce’s head and gasps: ‘make it hurt.’

Bruce bites the sensitive skin of Tony’s inner thighs and abdomen until Tony can’t hold back any of his moans. Then he sucks him down to the root and Tony groans, the hand in Bruce’s hair clenching slightly. 

Bruce has done this before, to Blonsky and some random guys. He knows how to make them beg. Tony is no different and starts to murmur a string of _fuck_ and _please_ and _Bruce_ when Bruce works his tongue just right.

It’s only a couple of minutes before Tony’s drenched in sweat and writhing, one hand clenching the sheets, the other almost pulling out Bruce’s hair. Bruce pulls off, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and gets up to take a couple of sips from his rum. He refills his glass, just to drag it out and hands Tony’s glass to Tony, whose fingers tremble as he takes it. He doesn’t comment on Bruce’s choice to let Tony come down when he’s up so high and it unsettles Bruce a little. It’s almost like Tony trusts him.

He goes through the nightstand drawers until he finds lube and condoms, drops them on a corner of the bed and sets Tony’s glass back on the night stand when Tony hands it to him only half empty.

‘You wanna lie on your belly for me?’, Bruce murmurs, touching the middle of the scars on Tony’s chest.

Tony nods, though he hasn’t quite caught his breath yet and turns over. His back is smooth, without any scars. Bruce has seen his own back in the mirror, and he’s seen Blonsky’s back plenty of times. He’s come to expect the thick, tight lines by now. He’s glad they aren’t there. 

Now that he’s not looking at Bruce anymore, Bruce takes a moment to kiss Tony’s shoulder blades. He’s not usually soft like this, isn’t even sure if he likes to be, but he’s almost completely sure that this is what Tony wants. Rough, overwhelming, always not quite what he expects, but from someone who cares about him, who touches him softly in between and doesn’t leave after. Bruce kisses Tony’s neck when Tony’s next breath is shuddering and unsteady and keeps going as he massages Tony’s ass. ‘You’re beautiful, Tony, you’re perfect,’ he whispers and Tony turns his head a little more so that Bruce can kiss him sloppily on the mouth. ‘Don’t touch yourself,’ he says when they pull apart, his voice a little harsher.

He squeezes lube onto his fingers and works Tony open quickly and methodically, a little rougher than he should. He makes sure to focus on Tony’s reaction and only repeats the things that make his hands clench in the sheets. He’s only at the second finger when Tony starts begging for Bruce to fuck him and the third slips in easily. He pushes four fingers in just once, and he can tell from Tony’s groan that he likes the way it burns.

He gives Tony a moment to come down again and this time holds the glass of rum in front of Tony’s lips to let him drink. Tony doesn’t seem very affected by the alcohol, maybe a little more relaxed, and it’s much the same for Bruce. From what he’s heard about Tony’s childhood, he thinks their relationship with alcohol might not be very different at all.

He puts the a condom on and pushes into Tony’s ass without much warning and Tony’s coherent enough to say, ‘Fuck, Bruce, that’s one A+ cock. I want it all the way in. I can take it.’ So Bruce bottoms out, slowly, while Tony moans and curses and thanks a god he doesn’t believe in for making Bruce’s cock. Bruce puts his hands and most of his weight on Tony’s shoulders, pushing him deep into the mattress.

Bruce pulls almost all the way out and slams back in, which makes Tony go quiet quite abruptly. He keeps his strokes hard and fast and short and even because he thinks that’s how Tony likes it. And Tony does, moaning _yes_ and _holy fuck_ and _please never stop_. Bruce crosses his arms over Tony’s chest and pulls him up to get better leverage and his chest is flush against Tony’s back, with only the sweater in between, which is much closer than he normally is with anyone, even hook-ups. He buries his head in Tony’s neck as he drinks in his moans and snaps his hips as fast as he can. 

Tony’s reaching behind himself, grabbing Bruce’s hip as he gasps out his name and Bruce lets go of Tony’s chest with one arm to grab Tony’s hand. Somehow that’s the most intimate part to him. Sex can be as impersonal as a handshake, but this, Tony reaching out for him, to be even closer when they’re already so close, holding onto his hand like they’re a fucking couple, that’s intimacy, and Bruce is too far gone to pretend he doesn’t like it, _need_ it, like he’s going to fall apart without it.

He makes himself let go of Tony’s hand eventually to jerk Tony’s cock, hard and fast and with just the right twist to have Tony coming in seconds. Bruce fucks him through his orgasm, hard and deep and with his lips against Tony’s ear.

‘Keep going,’ Tony pants when Bruce starts to slow down and Bruce does as he says without thinking, keeping up his rhythm as Tony’s moans go gradually from pleasured to pained. He’s so fucking beautiful like his, face slack like this oversensitivity is better than anything Bruce did to him before, like he could do this forever. Bruce kisses the back of his neck and Tony _whimpers_.

Bruce slows again eventually, when Tony looks so tired and oversensitive that Bruce feels uncomfortable keeping this up. ‘Okay?’, he asks, because this is still about Tony, and he’ll keep going if that’s what Tony wants.

‘Perfect,’ Tony says, voice hoarse.

Bruce pulls out and lies down next to Tony. ‘You want rum?’, he asks. He’s not sure about the after. This part he’s never done before.

‘Wait. You haven’t even come yet.’ Tony reaches for Bruce’s cock, still hard and wrapped in a condom and Bruce’s stiffens so visibly that Tony’s hand stills before he even touches him. ‘What?’, he says, and he’s all soft now. It’s intimate just looking at him.

‘I usually just take care of it on my own or wait until it – goes away.’

Tony frowns. ‘Is that what you want?’

Bruce closes his eyes. He’s not usually honest, but it’s easier like this, when he’s still wearing the sweater and Tony’s fully naked. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly.

He only opens his eyes when he hears Tony’s body shift. He comes to hang over Bruce, supporting himself with his left arm as the right peels off Bruce’s condom and throws it to the floor. He looks right into Bruce’s eyes and Bruce can’t fucking look away, that’s how beautiful Tony is. He feels Tony’s hand grip his cock and start a slow rhythm stroking up and down. 

‘It’s weird how quiet you are during sex,’ Tony says. People have told him that before, but he’s never noticed himself. During sex he’s too focused on his partner to hear anything else.

Bruce’s breath speeds up when Tony strokes him just right, but there’s a thousand other things going through his mind now that he doesn’t have Tony’s pleasure to focus on anymore. He’s afraid he can’t even come like this, with someone else right there. He doesn’t think he’s ever come in front of someone else before, except once with Blonsky, the first time either of them had sex, but that was different, Bruce was different. He can barely even remember it. He’s afraid he’s not going to be able to pay his food in a week. He’s afraid he’s not smart enough for Biology at MIT, that’s he’s wasting all his money just to drop out at the end of the year when he realises he’s too dumb. 

Tony keeps stroking him. ‘Is this okay?’, he asks.

Bruce nods. He wants this to be okay. It is okay. It’s normal. It has to be okay. He bucks his hips in Tony’s hand, and gasps, only half faked, and hopes it convinces Tony to keep going.

Tony does keep going. It seems to take ages, but eventually Tony kisses his neck and whispers into Bruce’s ear that he likes to be fucked just like Bruce fucked him. That he wants Bruce to keep going at him for days, that he wants Bruce to tie him up and gag him and fuck him whenever he feels like it. Tony’s hand gradually speeds up and Bruce comes without making a sound, Tony sliding up his sweater a little so that he doesn’t come onto it. He isn’t sure if it’s just a natural result of his cock being stroked or if Tony’s words did anything to help, but he’s relieved he came at all.

Tony wipes his hand on the sheets and cleans up Bruce’s belly, then lies on his back beside Bruce. He presses Bruce’s cheek lightly to get him to turn his head and kisses him, slow and lazy.

‘I thought you’d be angrier,’ Tony says. He’s not quite smiling, but he looks content.

‘Oh,’ Bruce says. He doesn’t know what to say, just stares at Tony, mouth a little slack. He’s always insecure, but never this openly, he’s never this open with anything. He should snap the fuck out of it.

He rubs one of Tony’s nipples with the calloused pad of his thumb, making Tony’s back arch a little. ‘You want rum?’, he asks again.

‘Yeah,’ Tony says.

So Bruce gets up and hands Tony his glass, then knocks back his own.

He stands by the bed, unsure of what he should do. He’s sure that this is part of it, to Tony, that Tony expects him to stay for a while, but Bruce has no idea what to do. Tony pats the bed beside himself and Bruce lies down on his side. ‘I can’t fall asleep,’ he says. ‘I’ll have nightmares.’

‘Oh,’ Tony says. ‘I can put on the TV?’

Bruce shakes his head. ‘It’s okay,’ he says.

For a while, neither of them speaks. Tony has one hand under Bruce’s sweater and is watching carefully as Bruce’s breathing becomes shallow just from being touched. It’s a weird moment, to Bruce, one where he can’t focus on his partner, where he is fully present inside his own body, feels every inch of Tony’s hand.

‘Fuck,’ he breathes, because this is too much, too new. The best way not to realise you desperately need touch is by never getting touched at all, by forgetting what you’re missing out on. He drags Tony in for a kiss, just to have something else to think of, to be able to focus on what to do to make Tony pant.

‘We should do this again sometime,’ Tony says after they’ve pulled apart and caught their breath.

Bruce is sure they won’t.


	2. Day 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter specifically: off screen, there's a guy who hurts Tony bc Tony refuses to have sex with him (but no non-con), some references to Bruce starving himself, some references to past child abuse, Bruce drives drunk which is obviously never okay, but nothing goes wrong.
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr (hungryface) if you need any more info.

Tony texts him the next day while Bruce is trying to down enough coffee to function instead of eating breakfast. His number is in Bruce’s phone (cheap, buttons and everything, he’s almost embarrassed that Tony saw it) with his name and a little heart-shaped emoticon Bruce didn’t even know worked on his phone. Bruce isn’t sure when that happened, but he doesn’t care, he’s not going to text Tony back.

‘wanna watch a movie w/me?’, the text says. Bruce deletes it.

Tony doesn’t text him again, but plops down next to him in their physics class the next day. ‘That you don’t fuck people twice doesn’t mean we can’t hang out,’ Tony says.

‘It really does,’ Bruce says, leafing through his textbook just to have something to do with his hands. He can’t even smoke in here. It makes him nervous.

‘I asked around and you still see Betty all the time. She says hi, by the way.’

Bruce doesn’t like being angry. It makes him feel too much like his dad. But the idea that Tony snooped around like that is enough to set him off. ‘As much fun as it was to fuck you silly, I really don’t want to talk to you ever again.’

‘God,’ Tony’s looking at him, pupils dilated. ‘You’re almost more fucked up than I am.’

This is the weird kind of anger, the one that’s mixed up with too many other emotions and makes Bruce’s skin go hot while his insides are ice cold. His toes and his fingers go numb. He looks in front of him instead of looking at Tony. ‘You have some fucking nerve.’

‘Look, you obviously need a friend. I am a friend. I’m probably even smart enough to keep up with you, I live close by, I have an amazing taste in music and I don’t mind if you sometimes feel the need to pound me into the mattress. But it’s okay if you don’t,’ He adds, raising his hands before Bruce can even glare at him. ‘What I mean is that I sometimes get lonely, and so do you, so it seems dumb to just go on like that if there’s another option, you know. It’s like the headmaster guy said at the beginning of the schoolyear. We’re exceptional people, we should take care of each other.’

He shouldn’t drink coffee. It makes him feel all shaky, despite the anxiety meds. Maybe that’s why he keeps craving it. ‘I don’t think that’s what he meant.’

‘How would you know? It’s not like you have anyone to take care off.’

What comes after the anger is always worse. The calm. The cold, overpowering desire to just make someone hurt as bad as he does. ‘You are a whiny, annoying kid and the only reason anyone even gives you the time of day is because you have money and a tight ass. You think you understand anything but you don’t, so fucking leave before you embarrass yourself further. You’ve misread this entire situation. It’s pathetic.’

In a moment Tony’s face goes completely neutral and it’s fucked up how easily he does that. Bruce has heard all about Tony Stark’s daddy issues, but this isn’t something you learn from not getting along with your father. This is the kind of shit that comes from years of abuse, of being in danger of being punished if you don’t react exactly as expected from you, and what’s expected from you changing with the hour. 

Bruce feels sick just looking at him, feels sick because of how fucked up it is that he basically just stabbed Tony and all Tony cares about is hiding the wound.

‘You better fucking regret that in the next three minutes,’ Tony says, his tone flat. ‘Because I’m going to sit right here through the whole fucking lecture and you’re gonna sit right next to me. And after you can do whatever the fuck you want, but you’re not going to pretend you won’t be thinking of me every night this month just because you’re too much of an asshole to admit you’re lonely.’

‘You’re full of shit, Tony.’

‘Amongst other things, yes.’

Bruce ignores him for the rest of the lecture and is the first to leave when it’s done. He walks to the bicycle stand at the side of the building on autopilot before he remembers that he’s sold his bicycle for thirty dollars two days ago. As he starts walking to his apartment, his phone buzzes in his pocket. 

_you’re thinking of me aren’t you?_ , Tony texts. And Bruce is, was thinking of him even before he saw his name on the little screen.

He deletes the text. He goes to the library because he doesn’t want to go back to his apartment and spends the time between lectures there, studying. He doesn’t eat lunch because he isn’t all that hungry and can’t afford it anyway and goes to his organic chemistry lecture. He arrives late because he isn’t very good at estimating distances on foot instead of by bike yet. Tony doesn’t have organic chemistry, but Bruce almost expected him to turn up, just to spite Bruce.

He lingers after the lecture, until almost everyone has left, and walks slowly to the cheapest pizzeria, buys the smallest pizza, no toppings, and eats it very slowly on a park bench. Then he just sits there, waiting. He sneaks into a frat party once he notices which house people are heading to and spends the rest of the night dancing with strangers and enjoying free beer. A girl starts to kiss his neck, but he tells her that isn’t what he’s looking for and she backs off, going back to just dancing with him.

He’s well on his way to being drunk by the time someone grabs him from behind. Normally he would startle so bad he’d knock over whoever’s stupid enough to touch him, but now all of his reflexes are dulled, and he turns slowly, calmly. He wishes sometimes he could be like this even when he’s sober.

Tony turns out to be the one who wrapped his arms around Bruce’s waist and there’s a weird thing his mind does when he sees Tony: flashes of all kinds of emotions, anger and longing and worry and irritation all going through his head at once.

Tony looks like a mess, though, and the worry wins out easily. His eye is swollen and purpling, his lip is split. He grabs Bruce’s wrist so tightly it’s probably the only thing keeping him from falling over.

He leans close to Bruce. Bruce assumes he wants to say something over the music, but instead Tony kisses him, and for a moment, Bruce can’t move. Then he pushes Tony away, keeping a hold of his shoulders so that he doesn’t fall over. ‘Are you fucking crazy?’, he calls out. A frat house is not exactly to right place for public displays of homosexual affection, Bruce is sure. And he doesn’t want to kiss Tony, that’s also important to remember.

‘What happened to you?’, he asks. He’s not drunk enough for it to affect his speech.

Tony doesn’t answer. ‘Let’s have some fun upstairs! We can bring that girl you were dancing with to make it look less gay!’, he slurs over the music. His voice sounds cheerful, but forced. He looks dead on his feet.

‘You need to get some fresh air, you don’t look okay.’

For a while, Tony just stares at him. He looks lost, young, and this is the first time Bruce wonders how old Tony actually is. He remembers reading somewhere that Tony came to MIT at fifteen. Bruce has no idea how long ago that was, only that he himself is twenty and that this could possibly (and by possibly he means if Tony is fifteen or sixteen or seventeen) be very bad and gross and creepy. He swallows down the panic for now. 

‘Will we have fun after?’, Tony asks, grabbing Bruce’s hand.

‘Let’s pretend we will, okay?’, Bruce says as he starts to lead Tony out of the house.

The quiet and the fresh air outside are soothing and only now Bruce realises how thoroughly the party had been grating on his nerves. He lights a cigarette, takes a few drags and then hands it to Tony, who even says thank you when he accepts it.

‘Where did you park your car?’, Bruce asks Tony, trying not to flinch when Tony puts an arm around his waist and leans against him.

Tony just nuzzles Bruce’s shoulder in answer and Bruce pretends pulling him closer is an automatic reaction to support Tony’s weight. His hair smells strongly of beer. He only looks up when Bruce stops walking. 

‘What?’, he asks. He still looks so fucking lost that it makes Bruce’s heart ache and he wonders how things turned out like this. How he suddenly gives a fuck about some bratty guy who’s really not that bratty at all and who is open and honest and expects Bruce to be, too.

Bruce’s voice is rough when he repeats, ‘Where’s your car?’ 

‘Oh,’ Tony says, ‘Over there,’ pointing at a different car than the Audi from yesterday.

He hands Bruce the keys without Bruce having to ask and sits in the passenger seat with his eyes closed while Bruce starts the car. He looks pale in the yellow light of the car light that flicks out when Bruce pulls his door shut.

Bruce has been on his feet long enough for his leg to hurt like hell, but it’s nothing he can’t ignore, even when driving makes it worse.

‘So what happened?’, he asks as he drives away. He shouldn’t be driving under influence, but Tony can’t live that far away and there’s no traffic at this hour, so he feels less guilty about it than he would in any other situation. He will stay at least ten miles per hour under the speed limit at all times.

Tony pauses. ‘I was at the party?’ He sounds unsure.

Bruce glances at him. ‘Did you drink a lot?’

Again, Tony just stares at him for a while. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you ever had a concussion?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you think you have one now?’

Tony shrugs.

‘Look, I can just drive you to the ER, but that’s gonna cost a bunch of money and –‘

‘No, no, not the ER. Someone’s gonna snap a picture of us and put it on Twitter.’

‘That was a very short concussion.’ Bruce says, cold. He slows the car to a stop in the middle of the road. There’s no other moving vehicle in sight. ‘One for the medical journals.’

Tony shrugs.

Bruce holds onto the wheel and counts to ten. ‘Were you faking a fucking concussion?’

Tony shrugs again. ‘Dude did hit me pretty hard.’

Bruce is glad he hasn’t started the car up again. He feels a little like the world is shaking. ‘What dude? What did he do?’

‘Nothin’ bad. We made out, I was really into it, then I told him I didn’t wanna go any further. He hit me a couple o’ times. Dumped his beer over my head. That did suck. Beer smell is -’

‘Fuck, Tony, why didn’t you just tell me that?’

Tony turns to lean his side against the car seat, pressing his face into the leather. He isn’t making eye contact. ‘Because I figured if I had a concussion you’d have to stay over to see if I didn’t go into a coma. And I um – I really don’t wanna be alone tonight.’

‘Oh,’ Bruce says. ‘And out of all the people you could ask, you ask me?’ 

He redirects his focus to starting up the car and driving straight. He doesn’t like any part of this conversation.

Tony sits up clumsily, then goes back to his previous position, frowning at Bruce. ‘Who did you want me to ask, the creep that socked me in the jaw for being a cocktease?’

‘No, but – we’ve only known each other for two days. The only thing I’ve done to you so far is fuck you. How do you know _I’m_ not a creep?’

‘Because you’ve made it abundantly clear that you didn’t even enjoy fucking me and you’re never going to do it again. You’re the only person I know in this whole town who’s ever told me they don’t wanna fuck me. Doesn’t mean we can be friends, though, apparently.’

‘I did enjoy fucking you.’

Tony looks so fucking surprised that Bruce feels sick. ‘But you didn’t even come?’

‘Yeah, but that’s just – that’s no indication of –‘ Bruce sighs. He really, really doesn’t want to be talking about any of this. ‘You can enjoy sex without coming.’ He should say sorry for giving Tony the wrong impression, but Bruce isn’t very good at apologies.

‘Oh,’ Tony breathes. ‘Okay. I live right there. The white building.’

Bruce pulls into the parking lot in front of the small apartment building. It looks clean, in a nice neighbourhood. 

‘Well, um… I’ll see you, right?’, Tony says as he starts to reach for the handle of the door.

Bruce is probably taking advantage. He’s probably using Tony as an excuse not to go back to his apartment. And that’s probably a bad thing to do. But he’d rather do pretty much anything over going back to that roomful of memories. ‘You said you didn’t want to be alone?’

Tony freezes, but doesn’t look at him. ‘What?’

Bruce clenches his jaw. He doesn’t care if Tony actually heard him or not, he’s not going to make himself vulnerable twice. ‘Don’t make me repeat that.’

‘Okay, then,’ Tony murmurs, ‘so you’re staying over?’

The parking lot they’re in is lit by a single floodlight. Everything is covered in either light or shadow, with nothing in between.

There’s a moment of perfect stillness while they sit in the car. 

‘Hey, how old are you?’, Bruce asks. Right now the world isn’t shaking anymore. Nothing is shaking.

‘I’m nineteen next month. Month and a half.’

Bruce only nods.

They don’t speak as they make their way out of Tony’s car and towards the front door. Tony murmurs a thank you when Bruce hands his car keys back and opens the front door with a key on the same chain. They go up a flight of stairs, through a door, into Tony’s dark apartment.

Tony turns abruptly, and Bruce, walking behind him, steps back, worried that Tony will try to kiss him again, but all Tony does is look at him. ‘I assume you’re not up for cuddling?’

Bruce shakes his head.

‘Okay,’ Tony says. ‘Then we’ll take the couches,’ he decides, gesturing at three long white couches positioned in a U-shape, with a flat screen TV at the mouth of the U. Bruce is pretty sure his entire apartment fits into the little square the furniture makes. ‘I’m pretty exhausted, but if I happen to be awake while you’re having a nightmare, do you want me to wake you?’

Bruce thinks about that for a second. This is the first time he’s fallen asleep near anyone except for Blonsky (or Betty, but that’s different), and Blonsky knew exactly what he signed up for when they first slept in the same room. He knew what Bruce looked like when he had a nightmare, too still and too quiet, he knew how violently Bruce could react when woken up and he was prepared to hold Bruce tight until it was over and get elbowed in the gut for his trouble.

Tony has no idea, and Bruce would like to keep it that way. ‘I think it’s safer if you just let me sleep.’

Tony salutes him in answer. ‘There’s pillows and blankets on every couch, the right one is mine, so you just pick one.’

Bruce walks over to the left couch and lies down after having kicked off his shoes and taken off his belt. Tony does the same and starts piling blankets on top of himself right away. It’s weirdly intimate, lying opposite each other in the dark with all that silence around them.

‘It’s weird,’ Bruce says, honest. ‘Everyone says you’re inconsiderate.’

Tony looks up at him briefly while arranging his blankets. Finally content, he settles down. ‘Oh, I am, you just caught me in a weak moment. ‘G’night.’

‘Night,’ Bruce mumbles.


	3. Haircut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two quick things that don't really affect the story, but that I'm leaving here anyway: I changed the title of this work to Bruising the Sun. It's still a Lorde lyric bc I love Lorde a LOT and pretty much this entire story and all of the work around it was written with Lorde playing in the background.
> 
> I also changed the warning. This used to be underage, but I aged both Tony and Bruce up a year (I changed the lines about their ages the last chapter). I calculated litterally once what age would make the most sense for them to be keeping in mind some events, I now realised I miscalculated, bc of course I did. I'm pretty glad about that. I didn't really like this being underage in the first place. 
> 
> for this chapter specifically, there's not really any warning except for smoking.

Bruce wakes up from a nightmare hours after falling asleep on Tony’s couch. The sun is rising through the windows pointed east and Tony is still fast asleep. His breathing is good, even.

Bruce goes to the kitchen table at the other side of the room and opens the window above it. He lights a cigarette. He doesn’t remember smoking it, but next time he’s paying attention, it’s gone all the way to the filter and there’s ashes on the windowsill. He lights another one.

He’s on his third cigarette when Tony stirs on the couch. ‘Ugh,’ he mumbles. ‘I hate reality.’

Bruce looks over at him as he sits up, but doesn’t say anything.

‘Please tell me you have a hangover, too.’

‘I do,’ Bruce says. It’s not so bad, a bit of a headache and enough nausea to keep him from eating at least until noon. He’s had way worse.

Tony looks more miserable, his unbruised eye has a dark circle underneath it, too, squinted against the faint light. 

‘Will you think I’m an asshole if I wear sunglasses inside?’

Bruce shrugs and lights another cigarette. ‘Not any more than I would otherwise.’

Tony reaches under the couch and after feeling under it for a moment, finds a pair of sunglasses. They look good on him. Bruce leaves his cigarette by the windowsill and goes to the kitchen area to figure out Tony’s coffee maker instead. Tony doesn’t move to help, but eventually Bruce finds what buttons to press on his own.

‘Do you want to go on a trip with me? Leaving tonight and getting back by two pm tomorrow. Your nine o’ clock lecture is cancelled, so you only have class again at three.’

‘What are we gonna do?’

‘Just… Something I need your help with. I’ll totally ride your dick as thanks.’

‘I don’t want you to ride my dick,’ Bruce bristles. He knows by now that Tony is barely even serious anymore. He’s just pushing Bruce’s buttons for sport. He walks over to the living room and sits down on the couch opposite Tony, puts the coffee on the coffee table between them. He only found one mug, but they can share it.

‘There has to be something you want me to do. You’re obviously kinky, in a weird way. Do you want me to dress up in all leather? Or to, like, let you whip me with a horse riding crop? Do you want me to shave my balls? You can teach me how to deepthroat? I’ve never done that before. Well, I’ve had a cock down my throat before, but it didn’t go so well. And you’re good at it. Like, really, really good. You should definitely teach me.’

The mental image of Tony with a cock in his mouth is tempting, but Bruce banishes it from his mind as fast as possible.

‘Don’t be like that,’ he says. He doesn’t want to be angry. He hates being angry, even if it’s all that keeps him going sometimes.

Tony kneels in front of him and bites his lip in a way that’s probably too exaggerated to still be sexy. He even takes off his sunglasses. His voice is low and breathy. ‘Come on, Banner. Fill my head with cock. Make me forget everything for a while.’

Tony isn’t touching him. That’s good. That’s something. That means he’s still respecting some of Bruce’s boundaries.

Half of this is pushing buttons. The other half is desperation. Bruce has no idea what’s the cause.

He slides from the couch to sit down beside Tony. ‘Don’t be like this. You obviously need something. Is there anyone you can call, someone who can give it to you?’

‘You can give it to me.’ It’s sort of sad, how much Tony seems to need this. How desperately he seems to need a distraction.

‘Tony, no.’ 

‘I have a dildo? You wanna push a dildo down my throat?’

‘Tony.’

Tony sighs. ‘I just don’t want to think for a while. You’d rather I do cocaine? I still have some I think. The, um, Sarah or something left it here.’

He doesn’t go looking for it, though, just stays right there beside Bruce. His face slowly turns serious, until it’s nothing but sadness.

‘Can I hug you? You don’t have to do anything, just – just let me.’

Bruce nods.

Tony puts his arms around Bruce, pulling them both to lie down on the rug. They stay like that for a while. It’s not the most comfortable way to lie down, despite how thick the rug is, but Tony isn’t trying to talk Bruce into sex anymore and Bruce can’t see the sad look on his face, so this is good. He reaches up to drag his hand through Tony’s hair and Tony hugs him tighter. His face is pressed into Bruce’s sweater so tightly that it’s like he’s trying to smother himself. Bruce fists a hand in his hair, pulling a little. Tony lets out a shaky sigh.

He only moves when he starts to worry Tony might fall asleep on him. He pulls them back up, and Tony whines, but cooperates.

‘You need a suit,’ Tony says then, forcing himself back into being talkative, sitting back so that they’re not touching anymore. ‘I only have two here and one of them is blue, but we have a house outside New York where my mom dumped most of my wardrobes so that my stuff would be closer to me here than it would be in California. My suits are tailored to me, but you are only a little less tiny then I am, so they should fit. Also I think if I take you to a tailor you’ll slit my throat.’

All of this sounds ridiculous to Bruce, who used to think it was crazy that his parents had both a house they then lived in and the apartment he now lives in. Money is for food and loans in Bruce’s world. It’s not for multiple mansions and tailored suits and moving a wardrobe from one side of the country to the other.

‘Correct,’ he croaks out. ‘Maybe not slit your throat. Shoot you point blank in the head.’ He touches Tony’s forehead and notes the way his breath hitches. ‘Between your brows. Less struggle. And less of your blood will get on me.’ 

Tony nods. ‘Quicker death,’ he agrees. ‘Nice. Can we leave by four? Then we can go to the mansion and still be in New York in time for dinner.’

‘Or we could go after dinner? I have an appointment at six.’

‘What kind of appointment?’

‘Doctor’s.’ It’s not really a lie. Psychiatrists are doctors.

Tony just nods. ‘At nine?’

Bruce nods. 

‘Also can you help me cut my hair?’, Tony asks, dragging a hand through his hair, which is indeed a little long. Bruce likes it the way it is right now. He doesn’t say that, though, and instead follows Tony to the bathroom.

They take turns showering at Bruce’s insistence. Tony complains about it, but doesn’t push it too much. He does make a show of lathering soap all over himself, making filthy noises while Bruce catches up on their Physics textbook which he found on Tony’s floor and drinks all the coffee he made.

Bruce tells Tony not too look when he takes his turn, and surprisingly Tony doesn’t look. He sits in front of a mirror propped up against the wall (there’s also a regular mirror above the sink and a smaller adjustable one for shaving and then there’s two more in Tony’s bedroom) and tries out different hairstyles until Bruce has put on a sweater, underwear and sweatpants he’s borrowing from Tony.

Tony reaches for the cabinet under the sink and takes out a pair of sharp scissors. ‘Just cut off the parts that are too long. There’s hair clippers in my room for the sides, but I can do that myself.’

Bruce doesn’t like any of this, but he’s cut his hair himself enough to be able to do it on someone else. Tony just chats about a girl named Maya. Bruce has no idea who she is, but Tony seems to think she’s awesome. He tunes out most Tony’s cheerful rambling, but he doesn’t think Tony minds. It’s surprisingly pleasant, though, to have Tony’s voice right there, comforting. 

Bruce manages to salvage most of Tony’s hair but still cuts off enough of it to please Tony. Tony’s enthusiastic about his slightly new look.

‘Now let me do you!’

‘No.’

‘Who cuts your hair? They should hurry, it’s almost past your ears. You’re going to end up looking like a horse left out in the rain.’

Bruce doesn’t know what to say for a moment. Who the fuck even knows what it looks like when you leave a horse out in the rain?

‘Their fur gets curly,’ Tony says after a moment. He seems vaguely surprised, either at how ridiculous his own life is for involving horses of how ridiculous Bruce’s life is for not involving them at all. ‘When it rained I used to comb back their wet fur back and it would dry in ugly curls. You’re gonna look like that unless we resurrect your barber.’

‘I cut my hair,’ Bruce says. He just hasn’t made the time in a while. And his clippers are broken, which sucks because he likes having a buzzcut every now and then.

‘Because you don’t trust people around you with scissors?’

Bruce nods because as much as he wants that not to be true, it sort of is.

‘I would have stabbed you by now if I wanted to. All I’m gonna do is make you look really hot. You don’t really care about what your hair looks like anyway, and I do, so it’s only fair.’

‘That’s not how it works.’

‘That’s not a no.’

Bruce sighs and hands Tony the scissors while they switch positions. Tony keeps talking about Maya while he works and Bruce just tries to relax. Tony is right. He isn’t going to hurt Bruce. He’s just going to make Bruce’s life a little easier and Bruce has to learn to let him.

Tony cuts Bruce’s hair way shorter and Bruce holds one of the locks Tony cuts off between his fingers. He doesn’t know how he feels about this.

He only looks in the mirror when Tony is done, a brief glance to check that Tony didn’t make him look really ridiculous. He didn’t, so Bruce looks away again and thanks Tony. Tony frowns slightly, but doesn’t say anything.

He goes into his room and comes back with the hair clippers. He buzzes down the sides of his head and gets Bruce to do the back of his head, then takes a minute to make some minor changes to Bruce’s hair with the clippers. After, he blow-dries his own hair and then stands on his tiptoes to blow-dry Bruce’s as well, though Bruce tells him multiple times that he can do it himself.

‘Nap-time,’ Tony says when he’s done putting away all the stuff they used while Bruce wipes most of their cut hair to one corner of the bathroom. Tony can vacuum it later.

‘I’m leaving,’ Bruce says. It’s only two, but he can keep busy with homework until six. It’s warm enough to study outside, even.

‘Okay.’ Tony leans in to kiss Bruce, but Bruce anticipates it and pushes him back before he can. Tony pats him on the shoulder instead.

‘Bye, Bruce,’ he says. ‘You’re really beautiful with your hair.’ He lets himself fall face-first onto his bed instead of showing Bruce out.


	4. Medicated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters this week because the second one is pretty short.
> 
> Warnings for this one are a really short description of a murder and, throughout the entire chapter, unwanted side effects from psychiatric medication (if you need any more info, hit me up at hungryface on tumblr)

The psychiatrist prescribed Bruce anti-anxiety pills, antidepressants and something that’s supposed to make him less aggressive. He takes the first two every day without fail, but the third has a lot of side-effects that actually make him want to hurt people much more than he does without the pill, and it makes him as depressed as he is off the antidepressants, so he figures it’s better not to take them.

The psychiatrist notices, though, so once every week he pops the pill into his mouth and waits for it to kick in before he goes to the psychiatrist’s fancy office in the fancy part of town.

She’s very nice to him, but the meds make him feel all itchy and achy and like he has two layers of skin and the outer layer is too tight and the inner layer is too loose and it’s really hard to appreciate a person when they’re the one making you take the thing that makes you feel that way.

It’s not really her fault, though. One of the conditions for his early release from juvie was that he’d take meds against aggression. She had told him before that she thought he didn’t really need them, but that she couldn’t overrule a court order.

They talk about the weather for a little while and he scratches at his hand and his focus flits from her to the window to the vase to the picture of her kids to her to the top shelf of the bookcase to the glass of water in front of him to her.

He doesn’t tell her about Tony, though when she compliments his new hairstyle, he does say that a friend cut it for him. She asks about the friend but he shakes his head, and she drops it for now.

When he goes back to his apartment after, he takes another one of the aggression meds. Whenever they start to wear off he feels like he needs another one. Usually he hides the pills after taking one, to avoid this exactly from happening, but this time he forgot. He quickly fills a backpack with a change of clothes for tomorrow and a toothbrush.

Tony has texted him to ask where Bruce lives so that he can pick him up at nine. Bruce tells him that he lives in the dorms on campus so that he doesn’t have to tell Tony his address, takes a nap and then goes to campus and sits down on a bench by the dormitories to wait for Tony, bouncing his leg.

Tony picked out a different black car today and Bruce really wants to ask where he keeps getting them, if he really drives all the way to one of his mansions to switch cars or if he just has these parked somewhere behind his apartment or something. He doesn’t though, doesn’t say anything at all.

Tony puts on music and Bruce mostly just stares out of the window unless something inside the car suddenly grabs his attention. If Tony notices that Bruce is a little erratic, he doesn’t mention it.

Bruce isn’t sure how much later they stop at the mansion. He’s not very good with time when he’s like this. The drugs take at least six hours to wear off, and they aren’t wearing off yet, so it can only have been a couple of hours. Tony stopped for gas once, but Bruce has no idea when that was or where they were.

Right now he’s following Tony out of the car, looking at all the different trees and a little pond, and a bird and the sun and the front door and the sun gleaming from a window and then another window and Tony and the keys and the roof and a bird and Tony.

Tony grabs his wrist and Bruce just lets him. He scratches at his hip with his other hand.

Tony pulls him down hallways with pictures and little tables and patterned wallpaper and carpet and Tony and lamps and artwork.

Then they’re in a room.

‘Is this your room?’ The walls are a childish kind of blue, but the bed sort of looks like an adult bed with its sleek, expensive-looking design and king-sized mattress.

‘Yes.’ 

‘Is this yours?’ Bruce points at a tennis racquet propped up against the wall but doesn’t touch it.

‘Yep.’

‘All of this?’ There is also a lacrosse racquet beside it and a sports trophy lying toppled over on the floor.

‘That’s sort of the point.’

There’s all kinds of stuff. Science books and other books: popular fiction and science fiction and even some ones that are in Latin. There’s boxing gloves and running shoes and a fencing helmet. And abandoned projects with wires and delicate little innards spilling out. Tons of DVDs and VHS tapes and Star Wars figurines. Two different chess boards with the pieces of one board in a neat little box and the pieces of the other boards scattered everywhere. CD’s and records and a large, old turntable and posters of bands Bruce used to like, too.

‘Bruce, are you on speed?’

‘No. I had to take the drugs for my appointment with the psychiatrist. I have to take them or I go back to court and I’m over eighteen now so that’d be a problem,’ he explains as he crouches down to study a little robot with only one leg. 

Everything feels far, now. When he says something, it just floats away and he doesn’t even really register it. Forgetfulness is one of the drug’s side effects. It’s the one that Bruce minds least.

‘Why do you have to go back to court if you don’t take meds? Why do you have to go to court?’

‘Because I did a bad thing, but my lawyer was really good and the judge ruled it self-defence and involuntary manslaughter and I was a minor and they found a lot of evidence so they let me go but I had to get therapy and drugs to stop me from being aggressive, so that it wouldn’t happen again. And a couple months in juvie, but it wasn’t too bad.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I killed my father. I pushed him and he hit his head against the counter and cracked his skull. Not as much blood as you’d expect. Still a lot but not as much.’

‘But they had evidence? Against him?’

Bruce sighs. Almost worse than being abused by someone is having to talk about it in front of tons of people. They never made him take off his shirt in the courtroom, but they took pictures in the hospital, and even scans. They didn’t just show the court how fucked up he was on the outside, but also how many times he had cracked on the inside. ‘It’s all under my sweater,’ he tells Tony.

‘You –‘ Tony shakes his head and takes a step back. He’s probably scared, or disgusted or something. That’s how people get around Bruce. It’s not surprising anymore. Right now, Bruce doesn’t really mind. He gets it. He’s scared of other people, too. ‘Bruce you shouldn’t tell me this. You wouldn’t tell me this if you weren’t on those meds. I shouldn’t have asked. Let’s just find you a suit, I didn’t hear anything.’

Tony picks out a three of black suits for Bruce and then leaves his walk-in closet to let Bruce try them on.

He’s perfectly fine with the first one (everything is going to be uncomfortable right now anyway), but Tony just says ‘The Armani one is going to fit better around your shoulders. These pants are great on you, though.’

Bruce returns to the walk-in closet and spends several minutes staring at the two identical suits, trying to figure out which one is the Armani one.

‘Blue pocket square,’ Tony shouts from the other room eventually, so that’s the one Bruce puts on next. The pants are a little weird, so he just keeps on the ones from the previous suit. It doesn’t feel any different than the previous one, but Tony beams at him when he comes back into Tony’s room, so he figures it’s better somehow. Tony is choosing two ties out of at least ten identical black ties he’s spread out on his bed.

Tony doesn’t seem to want to stick around after that, and Bruce puts his normal clothes back on and Tony sticks the suit in a bag with the suit for himself and then they’re out of there.

Bruce falls asleep on the drive to their next destination. He has a nightmare that he forgets as soon as he wakes up and he’s glad that Tony seemingly hasn’t noticed.

They stop in front of a brownstone in some nice part of New York. They get out of the car and get their bags out of the trunk and then Tony goes up to the brownstone and rings the doorbell.

An elderly woman opens. She has smile lines and is beautiful and looks so friendly and Bruce immediately wants to trust her. She hugs Tony tight. 

‘I wish I’d been there,’ Tony says. He sounds sombre.

‘Oh darling,’ the woman says. She pulls back enough to study Tony’s face. She tugs with a thumb at Tony’s mostly faded black eye, but doesn’t mention it. ‘It happened so fast. There’s nothing we could have done.’

They step away from each other eventually. ‘Ana, this is Bruce Banner. Bruce, this is Ana Jarvis.’

She kisses him on the cheek (and apologises when Bruce leans away from her a little) and gestures them inside. Her house smells of cake and oranges.

‘I don’t have to tell Tony this, but Bruce, make yourself at home. It really is a pleasure to have you here. It’s so quiet without him.’

‘I know,’ Tony says.

There’s a moment of silence. Bruce has no idea what’s going on, but he follows Tony to the guestroom to put their bags away, then they sit on the couch. Ana puts a plate of cookies on the coffee table and sits with them.

‘Baking is not a very good coping mechanism when there’s no one to eat, right?’, Ana says. Bruce still doesn’t know what’s going on, but he picks up a cookie. He can feel the drugs wearing off slightly. Feels a little panicked already that they’re going to fade.

‘I should sleep,’ he says, when he’s finished the cookie. ‘Thank you, Ana.’

Tony makes eye contact with him and nods and Bruce smiles at him. Tony seems surprised.

‘We have to get up at eight for the service,’ Tony says.

Bruce goes into the guestroom. There’s only one king-sized bed, but there’s two blankets, so it’s okay. Bruce puts on his pyjamas, which are long shorts and a shirt so oversized the sleeves cover his arms all the way to his elbows, which has to be enough, there’s marks on his wrists, too (some cuts and a burn scar), but he can live with Tony seeing those. He hopes he won’t wake up until the anti-aggression meds are out of his system.


	5. Funeral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next weeks chapter is finally going to have some other Avengers! :)
> 
> Warning for this chapter is the mentioned death of a minor character and the funeral of said character.

Tony’s alarm wakes them up at eight and they take turns showering and dress in their black suits. Tony helps Bruce style his hair with gel and hairspray. They don’t talk about Bruce being on his meds last night. They both only have a single cup of coffee.

Ana is dressed in black as well and the three of them drive to a church.

Tony touches his hand into the holy water at the entrance and crosses himself. Bruce doesn’t. The last time he came to church was at his father’s funeral. He hadn’t planned on ever coming back.

They sit in the front of the church. There is a casket by the altar and a picture of an elderly man with smile lines. The church is nearly full by the time the service starts.

A priest leads the service and Ana comes forward at one point and talks about how amazing her husband Edwin was. After the service, people come to offer their condolences to Ana.

They go to the graveyard in Tony’s sleek black car. Tony doesn’t cry, not even when they put the coffin in the ground. Bruce does catch him sniffling every now and then, or trying to blink away tears and his breathing never quite seems even. Tony turns to him once it’s time to leave and gives him a shaky smile. Bruce can’t help himself, he puts an arm around Tony’s shoulders while they walk back to the car.

Maybe it’s the funeral that’s making him sentimental. He’s never been very good at any of this. Back when his mother died, he was too young to know how to process loss. When his father died, it didn’t feel like much of a loss at all. His lawyer made him go to the funeral so that he’d seem remorseful, but he never really felt like he’d had a father, so when he died, it didn’t really feel like a death, either.

At the reception after the funeral, they sit with Ana and a couple women she’s been friends with since they worked at a shoe factory together in the sixties. All the women are widows, too, but they are cheerful. Not in an insensitive way, in a nice way, an optimistic way. They ask Bruce if he has a girlfriend.

‘Or a boyfriend!’, one of the others interjects. ‘It’s 2017.’ She doesn’t say it in a reprimanding way, she says it like she’s awed they’ve come this far.

‘Is Tony you boyfriend, dear?’, another asks.

Bruce shakes his head. He hates how shy he gets. It’s not even that he’s afraid to speak to these women. It’s just that when he’s around strangers, his throat seems to be padded on the inside, so that every sound comes out muted, and his mouth can only open up far enough for a mumble. He never knows what’s the right thing to say.

‘We go to school together.’

The women talk to Tony and him about their yearly trip to Cape Cod, which they’ve only skipped twice in the forty years they’ve been making the trip. They ask if Bruce has ever been. He hasn’t.

‘We should go sometime!’, Tony says.

‘It’s a nice spot for a date,’ Ana says, and she winks at Bruce. Bruce will deny until his last breath that he blushed at that moment.

Bruce is glad when they’re in the car again. Despite having had enough sleep during the night, he drifts off while Tony drives them back to campus. He wakes up when they haven’t reached Cambridge yet, but their surroundings are already familiar.

Tony puts on music, something cheerful and optimistic that was probably written before either of them was born. He hums along absently and glances at Bruce every now and then. Bruce counts everything that has the colour orange in it until they get back to town.

Tony drives him to the dorms without a word. 

When he stops on the curb, neither of them moves.

‘Jarvis was my butler for a very long time. He was really important to me, you know. He was at my graduation when my dad wasn’t. That sort of sums it up. He was there. He always was.’

Bruce doesn’t know what to say to that. Tony sounds so sad and Bruce has no idea what he can do about it.

‘Just a kiss?’, Tony says.

Tony is manipulating him. But he’s also grieving and lonely, so Bruce turns his head and leans in, but waits for Tony to bridge the gap between them.

It’s a short, soft kiss. Tony holds on to the sides of Bruce’s neck and doesn’t let go even after he’s pulled away. Bruce isn’t sure he likes it. Tony’s eyes are big and beautiful and trusting. It doesn’t make sense in Bruce’s head that Tony is looking at him like that.

Tony presses another kiss to his lips, then just hugs Bruce, pulling him close despite the distance between the car seats, pressing his face into Bruce’s shoulder.

‘See ya,’ is all he says after he’s let go of Bruce.


	6. McDonald's

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more characters, yay!
> 
> I reread this a week ago and this chapter seemed fine then, but while rereading it now, it barely made any sense to me. I'm in the middle of retaking a couple of exams, so my brain is pretty fried and I'm hoping it has to do with that, but if you have any questions or remarks, leave them in the comments!
> 
> Also, a heads up for next week: I'm posting the chapter on either Friday or Saturday because I'm out of the country on Sunday.

For a while Bruce is worried that Tony has given up on him already. That the way Bruce acted while on his meds has finally convinced Tony Bruce isn’t the kind of person you stick with. He’s surprised Tony has lasted this long. He’s pretty sure Betty and Blonsky are the only people who’ve stuck around for more than 24 four hours after their initial one night stand.

He gets about seven hours to sulk and feel bad for himself before Tony erases his worries with a single text.

It’s a picture of a pretty drunk-looking guy falling over his bicycle. In white, Tony has drawn out angles and calculated the rate at which the drunk guy was falling. The caption just reads ‘Physics is everywhere’.

Throughout the following days, Tony sends him pictures of all kinds of random shit. There’s a bird trying to sneak up on Tony to get a bite from his sandwich. A picture of him screwing up making pancakes (he had asked Bruce over to help, but Bruce had a lecture). A picture of a heart-shaped leaf. Then a picture of a penis-shaped leaf (Bruce is sure scissors were involved). A picture of his actual penis (to piss Bruce off). A picture of fancy-looking pasta at some restaurant or another. A picture of a random cat Tony apparently became friends with.

Bruce can’t help but notice that Tony is alone in every picture. It’s normal to be on your own during lectures, but Bruce had sort of expected from the reputation Tony has that he’d never be alone outside of them. He hears about Tony having one night stands and getting dead drunk with frat guys, but that’s as far as Tony’s social life goes, from what Bruce can tell. He’d expected that all these people he hears talk about Tony Stark like they know him would actually hang out with him at some point.

He tries to convince himself that it’s pity and not actual friendship that drives him to Tony’s apartment only a couple days after the funeral.

That pity makes his stomach do the weird clenching thing when he sees the way Tony looks at him – like he’s happy to see Bruce.

‘If you show me your dick again I’m leaving. I’m just here to study.’

Tony grins. ‘You drive a hard bargain,’ he says. ‘But that’s a deal.’ He ushers Bruce into his apartment enthusiastically. ‘This is great. I didn’t peg you as a first initiative kind of guy.’

‘I’m not.’ He settles on the couch that he slept on the last time he was here. He hadn’t thought about it before, but Tony’s apartment is weirdly neat. There’s random things lying around here and there, but no stains or unwashed dishes or empty bottles. ‘I can’t study if you’re going to be talking.’

Tony pretends to lock his mouth and throw away the key, then zips to his bedroom to get his own studying material. He takes the couch opposite Bruce, grinning but remaining quiet.

He bounces his leg while he reads, mouths whatever he’s trying to memorise and bites the back of a pen a lot of the time, but Tony is surprisingly quiet. Sometimes Bruce catches Tony staring at him, but then again, he only notices because he’s looking at Tony a little more than necessary, too, so he’s not gonna mention it.

It’s nice, not spending the day sitting around on some park bench to study on his own while people throw Frisbees and shout at each other (it keeps making him flinch, and he hates that almost as much as he hates being in his apartment).

Tony ends up on Bruce’s couch after about an hour and pushes his toes underneath Bruce’s thigh. Bruce sighs, but doesn’t protest. It’s not like it would help anyway.

Tony shifts around every now and then until he ends up with his head resting on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce knows he should push Tony off, but the pity’s still there. Tony must be lonely as fuck if Bruce showing up to _study_ can make his entire day. Bruce can at least let him have this.

It takes a while for Bruce to notice that Tony has fallen asleep. He figures he can just sit there until Tony wakes up. It’s not like he’s going to run out of studying material anytime soon anyway. He stifles a yawn. Tony is really warm. 

When he wakes up, Bruce tries very hard to keep still. He hasn’t been woken up, there have been no sudden touches, so he can manage to keep himself in check. He knows he can’t be somewhere it’d just be acceptable for him to keep hitting until his traumatised mind realises he’s safe. There’s only two places where that is okay: his apartment and Blonsky’s and he doesn’t usually manage to fall asleep in either.

This is the worst moment, the one in which he can’t figure out where he is, where he thinks that maybe he’s back at home with his dad. Living with the man who killed his mother, too weak to do anything about it.

There’s a woman sitting on the couch to his right that he’s never seen before, and that sort of throws him off. She smiles at him in a way that’s very beautiful, but doesn’t feel genuine. He blinks slowly, taking in the rest of the room while keeping track of her from the corner of his eye. Tony’s apartment. That explains the warm weight against his side.

He must have moved more than he wanted to, because a moment later, Tony lifts his head.

‘’m studying!’, he half-mumbles, half-exclaims. He rubs his eyes and looks around until his eyes fall on the woman on the other couch. ‘Nat? How long have you been here?’

Then sits up and looks at Bruce. ‘I’m sorry.’ He should be. The part of Bruce Tony was sleeping against feels cold now that Tony’s not there anymore.

‘I’ll forgive you after you’ve washed all the drool out of my shirt,’ he murmurs.

‘I’ve only been here for fifteen minutes,’ the woman, Nat (maybe short for Natalie?), says. ‘I didn’t wake you up because then Pepper would have killed me. She Skyped me this morning, told me to make sure you were eating and sleeping.’ One corner of her mouth curves up slightly. ‘Seems someone else already has everything covered.’

Tony throws a pillow at her. She catches it without losing the half-smile. She’s the kind of beautiful that makes Bruce’s brain short-circuit a little.

‘Natasha, this is Bruce. He will kill you if you suggest anything non-platonic is going on between us. Bruce, this is Natasha, she’s taken.’

‘Totally. I’m dating a supermodel. He travels all the time, so that’s why you’ll never see him around.’ It’s hard to tell if she’s being sarcastic. She’s probably out of most supermodels’ leagues. ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Bruce. Have either of you eaten at all?’

‘I had breakfast?’, Tony tries. Bruce can’t even say that. He’s had strawberry juice and four cigarettes.

‘It’s almost seven. Breakfast stopped being an excuse eight hours ago.’

‘I feel like when Pepper asked you make sure I eat, she didn’t mean you should take me to McDonald’s.’

‘She didn’t mention any specific foods, so I feel like she left it up to me. And Steve says you guys haven’t talked in a while. That’s bad. You’re gonna get vitamin D deficiency if you don’t spend time with him soon.’

‘I talked to him two days ago.’

Natasha turns to Bruce. ‘Steve is a literal ray of sunshine. He works at McDonald’s, wanna come?’

Bruce shrugs. He should have enough money for chicken nuggets. ‘Yeah.’

Natasha and him step outside while Tony sprays himself with cologne and fixes his hair in the bathroom. Bruce tries to move as little as possible, hoping she won’t notice his limp. He’s not as self-conscious about it as he used to be, but it’s worse when he’s around people who are practically perfect.

‘Tony always tells people he’s into that all of his friends are taken because he’s afraid they’ll fall for one of us,’ Natasha says.

‘So you’re not dating a supermodel?’

‘Not right now, no. I’m not dating anyone.’

‘But you have dated a supermodel?’, Bruce asks. 

‘For a couple weeks, but it was mostly for money.’ 

She grins when Bruce tries to hide his confusion. It would make sense for Tony to be friends with a hooker, but Natasha doesn’t seem like one. 

‘No, not like that. He was a friend of Tony’s and Thor’s, sort of. We’d been fighting pretty much any time we were in the same room together, then he bet Thor good money that he could get with me anyway, I bet Tony and Clint good money that I could get with him anyway and it all worked out very nicely for the both of us.’

‘That’s pretty cool. Are you majoring in con-artistry?’

‘Art history, actually, con-artistry is just my minor.’

‘I honestly don’t know shit about art, but that sounds really cool.’

‘You’re probably a science major, if Tony likes you.’

‘Biology.’

‘He’s not being too much of an ass, is he? He can be a little much.’

‘Yeah, I noticed. He’s okay, though. When he’s asleep.’

Natasha laughs. ‘That’s how I like him best, too.’

Her smile widens and Bruce only realises why when he feels hands in his hair. ‘I’m not the only one whose hair needs fixing,’ Tony says cheerfully as he pushes Bruce’s hair around. Bruce protests but doesn’t move so that Tony won’t screw up his hair entirely.

They get into Tony’s car, Tony behind the wheel and Natasha riding shotgun. The drive to McDonald’s is short and once inside, Natasha makes her way to a booth that already has two other people in it.

‘Mr. Stark, we are honoured that you grace us with your presence. To be near you is to be near transcendence,’ a long-haired giant of a man says as he gets up and bows. His laugh booms through the entire room. ‘Where have you been, man?’ His accent sounds like Selvig’s, though it’s more subtle.

The second person, a guy with short, sandy blonde hair, gets up, too. ‘He was _gettin’ it_ ,’ he stage whispers to the long-haired man, eyes on Bruce.

‘You can’t just talk about our sex-life while we’re standing here,’ Tony says in exaggerated shock, hand clutching his heart. ‘That is very inappropriate, Clintward.’

‘Also we don’t have a sex-life,’ Bruce mumbles. He’s wondering why Tony doesn’t hang out with these people, who obviously like Tony, more often. Why he parties with frat guys who don’t actually like him and hooks up with weirdos like Bruce.

‘Yeah! You can’t just talk about our non-existent sex life!’, Tony exclaims.

‘Just give me a hug, you big baby,’ the long-haired man says as he wraps Tony, who doesn’t even reach his shoulders, in a tight hug. Tony pretends to resist, but Bruce can see from where he’s standing that Tony’s thoroughly enjoying the contact. He gives the short-haired man a quick hug, too and settles beside them on the bench. Bruce sits opposite him with Natasha beside him. 

‘Everyone, this is Bruce. Bruce, this is Clint,’ Tony says as he gestures at the short-haired guy, who Bruce notices is wearing hearing aids. ‘And that’s Thor. They both have girlfriends.’

‘Or boyfriends! If you’re gonna pretend all of us have an actual love-life you can at least be progressive about it.’

‘Okay, Clint actually has a giant crush on a man who is fifteen years older than him and may or may not be working for the secret service. That’s not even a lie.’

‘Again, I don’t see why working for the secret service is a bad thing,’ Clint says, defensive like they’ve had this conversation before.

Another blonde man comes over to their table. He’s dressed in a McDonald’s uniform. ‘Tony, it’s good to see you.’ Bruce doesn’t miss the way Tony looks at the guy. Sort of like the way he looks at Bruce.

To Bruce’s surprise, the man turns to Bruce next. ‘You must be Bruce. I’m Steve, It’s really nice to meet you.’ He leans forward and holds out his hand. Bruce reaches over and shakes it awkwardly. Who under 25 still does that?

Steve is beautiful, like Natasha-level beautiful, maybe even Tony-level beautiful. Thor looks like a model, too, and Clint is pretty in a very down-to-earth way. Bruce sort of gets why Tony’s afraid people might fall for them. Only none of them come anywhere close to how attractive Tony is.

Steve leaves again to get back to work. Tony follows him to the counter and hops onto it easily. He leans back on his hands and swings his legs like a kid while he makes conversation with Steve, who wipes down the counter and puts more fries in the fryer, occasionally taking care of people’s orders. 

They look so comfortable together, making each other laugh, catching up without any awkward pauses.

Bruce tries to focus on the conversation at the table, but he keeps getting distracted by the pair. Tony stays on the counter, but Steve keeps walking around to prepare orders for customers. Every now and then he gets too caught up in what he’s talking about with Tony and drifts over to him, standing closer than Bruce would be comfortable with.

Thor and Natasha are having a discussion about something having to do with Thor’s hair and Bruce tries to keep track of that, but eventually he just blurts out: ‘Why doesn’t Tony hang out with all of you more?’

‘Because he’s stubborn as fuck,’ Clint says right away.

‘How did you guys even meet?’

‘We sort of – all ended up at the ER because the same guy,’ Clint says, a strange expression on his face, like he finds the memory both funny and uncomfortable. ‘I was there with Nat because Thor’s brother, Loki, and I had gotten into a fight. Thor was there because Loki needed patching up, too. So we’re just sitting in the ER, Nat and Thor right next to each other because they were making fun of us, and suddenly this random guy comes up to us and starts this whole rant at Loki. He’s obviously drunk and his hand is in a splint. He wasn’t making any sense. That was Tony. Steve was trailing behind him, pretending to try and calm Tony down, but mostly just laughing his ass off. We sat there for hours.’

‘We’ve been seeing each other all the time since,’ Thor says. ‘But for some reason Tony keeps insisting we aren’t his friends.’

‘Because he’s stubborn,’ Clint repeats.

‘Whoever you’re talking about, that’s true,’ Tony interjects. Thor almost chokes on his drink laughing. ‘Steve’s _husband_ is here.’

Bruce glances over at Steve. There’s another man standing with him. He’s almost as tall as Steve, dark hair, wearing all black. One of his shirt sleeves is rolled up all the way to the shoulder and held there with safety pins, the entire arm missing. He looks dangerous with the leather boots and the tattoo coming up out of his collar, but his expression when he looks at Steve is gentle. They’re talking softly, then the man’s hand comes up to cradle Steve’s face and he kisses him slowly, like he’s afraid to break Steve. Steve says something else and they both grin, the man slapping Steve’s shoulder. 

The man’s name is James. Bruce and him have met before.

‘I still can’t believe they’re married,’ Clint says pensively.

‘It’s so romantic, though,’ Tony mumbles. It’s hard to tell if he’s making fun of them or not.

Thor leans closer to Bruce with a grin on his face, like he’s an old lady gossiping. ‘James did a tour in Iraq, his arm got blown off and in the hospital here in America, they would only let family into the room. So they wouldn’t let Steve get in for the first few days. He was a wreck, he wouldn’t even leave the hospital to shower or sleep. They married as soon as James got out of the ICU because he never wanted that to happen to either of them again,’ he explains.

Bruce nods. ‘That _is_ romantic.’ James lost his arm before Bruce and him met, which means their one night stand happened after James married Steve. Bruce thinks that he should be more worried about possibly being a homewrecker, but really James’ mistakes aren’t any of his business.

‘Do you like romantic things?’, Tony asks, looking straight at Bruce. His expression is hard to read. Mirth, curiosity, but also something else Bruce doesn’t recognise.

‘I guess? Everyone does, right?’

Tony shrugs. He glances back at Steve and James and when Bruce follows his gaze, he sees that James is coming over to their table.

He sits down on Natasha’s other side. ‘When you said it’d be fun to hang out, that didn’t imply you’d bring all you weirdos.’

‘James! You wound me!’, Clint exclaims.

‘Also we have a new weirdo,’ Tony says. ‘This is Bruce. Bruce, this is James. As you can see he loves us.’

They nod at each other. Neither of them mentions that they’ve met before. 

‘Can we finally order our food now?’

Bruce listens to the group’s comfortable banter while he eats his chicken nuggets. Tony orders extra-large fries and an two burgers and puts half of his stuff on Bruce’s plate. Bruce wants to protest, but Natasha puts her hand on his arm as if to tell him to just leave it.

‘So Bruce, how’d you meet Tony?’, Clint asks. He’s so exaggeratedly casual that it’s clear he’s trying to get Bruce to confess they hooked up.

Bruce takes a moment to mull the question over. ‘He just needed someone to study with. But he, you know, didn’t say that outright and was just generally very – Tony about it.’

‘Oh my god! You’ve only been talking to them for half an hour and you’re already using my name as an adjective! That’s horrible!’, Tony whines.

‘Bruce probably did that even before he talked to us. It’s in the dictionary,’ Clint says.

Thor puts an arm around both Clint and Tony’s shoulders and ruffles their hair. ‘As an English major, I can confirm this!’

It’s nice to see Tony comfortable and happy like this. The way he leans into Thor’s touch, grinning. Their inside jokes, how genuinely nice they all are to Tony. 

Steve joins them not much later, when they’re the only customers left. His shift doesn’t end until one am, but there’s not much to do right now, so he can take a break. He sits next to James, kissing his cheek and murmuring something into his ear. James smiles slightly and nods, turning to peck Steve on the lips.

Bruce catches Tony staring at the moment, too, but he glances away the next second, starting to talk loudly about some high school girl Clint apparently hangs out with.

‘It’s not like that. Kate stalks _me_ , not the other way around. That means it isn’t creepy.’

‘You do seem to have a thing with age differences,’ Natasha notes innocently, like she _isn’t_ trying to get under Clint’s skin.

Tony seems distracted enough by the ensuing argument about what’s the maximum acceptable age difference for a couple, but he still glances at Steve every now and then like he can’t help himself.

They only leave at the end of Steve’s shift. It’s a Saturday, so it doesn’t really matter.

‘You sure you don’t want to come to the party?’, Natasha asks Bruce. She’s the third who asks. Clint, Natasha and Thor are going. Steve and Bucky aren’t. To Bruce’s surprise, neither is Tony.

‘Nope,’ he says. ‘Have to study tomorrow.’ They’re both listening in on Tony, Steve and Clint’s conversation. The three of them are trying to keep their voices down, but even then, they’re still pretty loud.

‘Dude, you gotta make a move, he’s totally you type!’, Clint half-whispers.

‘I don’t even have a type,’ Tony mumbles, pushing Clint away when he tries to put an arm around him, then tugging his arm around his shoulders anyways.

‘You do’, Clint insists. ‘Smart, doesn’t take your shit, knows how to be rough, knows how to be gentle, adorable as fuck, doesn’t get annoyed too easily, probably didn’t have a nice childhood. I know I’ve only met him a couple hours ago but I think he ticks all the boxes.’ Bruce hasn’t known Steve for a very long time, but he’s sure he ticks all the boxes, too.

‘He does. I like you better when you’re not being scarily observant, though.’

‘Do you think he’s into you?’, Steve asks. He keeps his eyes on Bucky and Thor, who are walking out in front of them, talking about who knows what. 

‘I thought he was, but then he made it clear that he wasn’t, and then he seemed to be into me again and then he didn’t… I don’t know. I’m probably misreading all of the just-friends-signals again. Can’t we talk about something else?’

‘Just give him time, respect his boundaries. No-’

‘Maybe I should just wait until he breaks up with his boyfriend and needs a rebound.’ Tony’s voice sounds light, but Bruce can immediately tell it was the wrong thing to say. Steve stiffens. Beside Bruce, Natasha sighs. ‘This again,’ she murmurs.

Clint slaps Tony’s arm, but Tony just glares at him.

Steve sighs and comes to a stop a couple yards away from where Tony’s car is parked. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at Tony for a moment and pulls him into a short hug, which Tony automatically returns. Despite seeming to be mad at each other, they both insist on the goodbye. Steve says something to Tony, too quiet for anyone else to hear. Tony looks up at him and shakes his head. Steve says something else, but Tony just glares at him.

Tony doesn’t talk to anyone else as gets into his car and Steve walks over to where James and Thor are waiting by the other two cars.

‘Bye, Tony!’, Clint says empathically, like he’s not expecting Tony to react otherwise. Tony just waves through the driver’s side window of his car, which he has rolled down to smoke.

Bruce says bye to everyone before he gets into the passenger’s side.

He gets a text from James while Steve is still saying goodbye to everyone and James has already gotten into their car. _We pre-negotiate if either of us wants to have sex with someone else. I had his permission. Just so you know._

Bruce doesn’t answer, but makes eye contact with James and nods. Tony doesn’t notice. He’s still smoking grumpily.


	7. Best Feeling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I was leaving on vacation on Saturday, but I'm actually leaving tomorrow! So I'm posting this chapter today. The next one is probably going up next Saturday of Sunday.
> 
> There's no warnings for this chapter except that it's pretty much only sex.

‘What was that?’, Bruce asks after Tony’s finishes his cigarette and rolls the window back up. He doesn’t sound angry or annoyed, just curious. The others have already left.

‘A cigarette. It’s like that thing you always smoke in the morning. It’s a piece of paper with tab-’

‘Don’t be dumb. It’s – You seem upset. Thought you’d want to talk about it.’

‘It’s just something that’s good to bring up when Steve starts thinking he can tell me how to live.’

‘Are you into him? You seem into him.’

‘Have you seen him? Everyone is into him. You are, too.’

‘But purely in a physical way.’

‘So am I.’

There’s a silence. Tony doesn’t seem to be planning on starting the car anytime soon.

Bruce figures he might as well spare himself the trouble and drop it. Tony isn’t going to tell him anything anyway. ‘You know what’s weird?’, Bruce says eventually. ‘I had sex with James – somewhere last month I think. Really good sex.’

‘He’s cheating?’ Despite Tony seemingly being mad at Steve, he sounds heartbroken.

‘Apparently they have an open relationship – sort of. He said he asked Steve’s permission.’

‘That’s sort of hot. Did you bottom?’

Bruce nods. ‘We both did. We switched.’

‘Will you tell me about it later?’

‘Okay. Are you in love with Steve?’

Tony shrugs. ‘Sometimes I think I am but really I just want him to want me. ‘Cause if some perfect angel like Steve is into me, that’d make me a pretty good guy, right? I like you better, though.’

He leans over, no hesitation, and presses his lips to Bruce’s. Bruce doesn’t kiss back, but waits a few seconds before he pushes Tony away.

‘Just drive me home,’ Bruce says quietly.

Tony starts the car. ‘You can stay at my place. I promise I won’t make a move.’

Bruce isn’t good at being open about how he feels, but now that he’s seen Tony around all these amazing, functioning people who deserve him so much more, Bruce feels he has to at least try to be honest to Tony. Before Tony gets stuck with him. ‘The problem is that I sort of want you to.’

Tony leans his head against his car seat, eyes on Bruce. ‘Why is that a problem?’

‘I don’t – I can’t be this person you’re expecting me to be. I can’t be a normal guy who loves you and has sex with you regularly and kisses you on the lips. Hell, I can barely make eye-contact most of the time. I’m not going to be your boyfriend or even your friend. I get – irrational sometimes and I -’

‘Well figure it out, okay? Just not tonight.’

For a long while, Bruce doesn’t say anything. ‘Not tonight,’ he agrees quietly.

The drive to Tony’s apartment is fast. Bruce doesn’t really remember it. 

It’s once they’re in the apartment that the hard part starts. Tony doesn’t turn on the lights. Bruce goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water.

He sits on the couch after having emptied the glass and waits. Tony had disappeared into his bedroom. Bruce thinks he might have lost his nerve.

It’s a couple minutes before Tony comes back. It’s so dark Bruce can barely see the expression on his face. He can make out what Tony’s holding, though. It’s a dildo. Bruce doesn’t know much about sex toys, but he thinks it’s pretty standard in both size and shape.

Without any preamble, Tony kneels on the floor in front of Bruce and puts the dildo to his lips. He tries to push it all the way in right away, but chokes as soon as the dildo touches the beginning of his throat. He pulls it out and coughs.

‘You have to be more relaxed,’ Bruce murmurs. He’s pretty sure he learned how to deepthroat mostly while under the influence of at least one drug, but he doesn’t want it to be like that for Tony. He takes the dildo out of Tony’s hands.

He gets up and shoves the coffee table aside as far as it will go, leaving the dildo on top of it.

‘Take you clothes off and lie down on the rug.’ 

Tony does as he’s told. It keeps surprising Bruce, how obedient Tony is in bed when he never is in any other situation.

Bruce kneels down beside Tony. The rug is thick enough to be comfortable.

Everything feels different. Quiet, like they’re underwater. Bruce’s hands are lighter than they normally are. His knees are still heavy.

He puts two fingers against Tony’s lips and Tony’s mouth falls open right away. Bruce is careful when he slides them in, all the way to the knuckle. Tony’s eyes are on him, steady, trusting, and that alone is terrifying.

Tony’s breath is the only thing breaking the silence. It’s coming through his nose, harsh, speeding up. The tips of Bruce’s fingers are at Tony’s throat and Tony is trying not to gag or cough. Bruce sees how it takes more and more effort the longer he leaves his fingers in that spot.

‘You have to relax your throat,’ Bruce says. Tony glares at him, as if to say _easier said than done_. He swallows and immediately gags around Bruce’s fingers, so Bruce pulls out, wiping his fingers on Tony’s chest because it seems like the kind of detail Tony might like. He does like it, if the darkening of his eyes is anything to go by.

When Bruce looks over Tony’s body, he realises his little moment had more effect than he expected. Tony is already rock hard. Bruce has barely even touched him yet.

He gets up again and finds lube in a drawer under the TV. He pockets a condom, too, but that’s for later.

He squeezes a bit of lube onto his fingers and drops the lube on the rug before he kneels back down beside Tony. Tony is looking at him, following every movement, so Bruce doesn’t warn him before he presses one finger into Tony’s ass. Tony can’t quite stifle the noise he makes at the coldness of the lube. ‘Fuck,’ he murmurs, when Bruce starts thrusting the finger right away, steering clear of Tony’s sweet spot for now.

Tony’s hands are clenching in the rug, his chest rising and falling quickly. ‘I can take another,’ he groans. Bruce hits his prostate and Tony moans loudly. ‘Come on,’ he mumbles once he’s back to himself. ‘I can take more.’

Bruce ignores him and keeps at it with the single finger for another couple of minutes, randomly jabbing Tony’s prostate a couple of times.

‘You gotta relax,’ Bruce says. It’s annoying that Tony keeps trying to get control of the situation, when the whole point is that he’s trying to give up control.

‘Maybe if you add more fingers –‘

‘Do you think you’d be able to keep silent until after you’ve come?’, Bruce asks, his voice low. Blonsky and him tried dominance every now and then, and Bruce never really liked it, but this doesn’t need to be like that. It’s just a tiny little aspect, a trick to take control away from your partner. It could work for Tony. If it doesn’t, Bruce can always tell him he can talk again.

Tony just looks at him for a long time, but then nods.

‘Okay, good. You can only talk if you need me to stop or pause, okay?’

Tony nods again and Bruce squeezes a little more lube onto his fingers and adds another one. Tony doesn’t make a noise. Bruce rotates and scissors his fingers, taking his time. When he’s sure the dildo will slide into Tony’s ass completely painlessly, he starts aiming for Tony’s prostate with every thrust.

Tony’s back arches and a small, soft noise slips from him when Bruce does. He lets out a keen when Bruce just keeps going. Then Bruce stops, stilling his fingers inside. Tony already seems close to coming, but Bruce can adjust the way he’d planned this out in his mind.

‘Can I make you come already or do you want to wait?’

Tony mouths ‘Come’, so Bruce thrusts his fingers back in, adding another finger because Tony’s general motto seems to be ‘more is more’.

Tony moans loudly, arching his back when Bruce adds a fourth finger. He slows down a little to let Tony adjust, but then steadily speeds up until Tony’s letting out a long, high-pitched moan that stutters with every thrust of Bruce’s fingers. He’s thrusting his fingers in and out of Tony’s ass as fast as he can and starts jerking Tony’s cock at the same pace. Tony is coming in seconds and Bruce keeps up his rhythm while Tony fists the rug and arches his back, crying out, come splattering onto his abdomen. 

He pulls his fingers out only after he’s stroked Tony through every single aftershock of his orgasm.

Tony smiles at Bruce, stretching out like a cat. He’s practically glowing. ‘Fuck, that was… intense.’

‘We’re not done yet,’ Bruce says as he goes to retrieve the dildo from the coffee table.

‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

Bruce strokes Tony’s thighs and Tony eagerly spreads his legs. Bruce pushes in the dildo slowly, mindful of Tony’s oversensitivity right now.

Tony moans lowly. ‘That is the best feeling,’ he mumbles, canting his hips to get the dildo in faster.

‘You like that?’

‘Yeah, keep thrusting.’

Bruce does, his mouth going dry when Tony lets out a high, shaky moan and squeezes his own soft cock. He keeps going for a bit, just to take in the sight of Tony, utterly blissed out, riding that edge of too painful like he wants to stay there forever.

Eventually he stills. ‘You still want to try deepthroating?’

Tony nods. When Bruce turns on the vibrating function of the dildo, Tony’s breath stutters, but he doesn’t make a sound, squeezing his eyes shut. ‘It’s like – ah, fuck – It’s like you’re – reading my fucking mind.’ Bruce hadn’t known for sure if there would be a vibrating function at all, but knowing Tony, he’d assumed there would be.

‘On your knees,’ he says. ‘You gotta make sure with your left hand that the vibrator stays in, okay? It only goes out when we’re done.’

While Tony gets to his knees, moaning when the vibrator shifts inside of him with every move, Bruce unzips his fly, pulling out his cock, which is pretty much completely hard. He takes the condom out of his pocket and rolls it on.

‘Take your time, okay?’, Bruce says when he comes to stand in front of a kneeling, blissed-out Tony.

Tony nods and without another word, he puts his right hand around the base of Bruce’s cock and starts sucking the tip. He doesn’t pause at the taste of the condom and starts taking more and more of Bruce’s cock until he has to move his own hand out of the way to keep going. He gags, but keeps pushing himself down on Bruce’s length.

‘Hey, slow down, okay,’ Bruce murmurs, stroking Tony’s hair, but Tony just pulls back a little and pushes himself down again. He tries to get into a rhythm, bobbing his head with determination, but the movement makes the hand on the vibrator shift and hit his prostate by accident. He moans loudly around Bruce’s cock and has to pull off to cough.

He wipes saliva from his lips and adjusts the vibrator. ‘That was sort of hot,’ he says. ‘Awkward, but hot.’ He’s out of breath and his hair is sticking to his forehead with sweat.

‘You have to relax,’ Bruce repeats. ‘And take it slow.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ Tony says, saluting Bruce with his right hand, his left still keeping the vibrator in his ass. He puts his right hand back on Bruce’s cock and tries to swallow it down again. This time he does take it slower, breathing deeply through his nose, relaxing his throat. It’s slow, but eventually his nose hits Bruce’s pubic bone. He stays like that for a while, even though he isn’t able to breathe with Bruce’s cock down his throat. Then he pulls off just far enough to breathe and plunges back down hard. He bobs his head, his throat bulging slightly when he swallows Bruce down. 

He keeps at it for a couple of minutes, having to pull off a couple of times to cough when he overestimates himself. 

Bruce doesn’t know what’s hotter, the stimulation of a mouth enveloping his cock or how much Tony seems to be enjoying this.

When Tony finally pulls off, he’s completely out of breath. ‘Fuck – The relaxing thing is working.’

‘I see that,’ Bruce says, stroking Tony’s hair.

‘Bruce, I want you to fuck my face. Once I’ve caught my breath. I really want that.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Obviously. Just do it. Well, give me a sec first. Then do it.’ Tony leans his head against Bruce’s thigh. Bruce’s stomach does a weird flip when Tony angles his head a little and starts mothing at Bruce’s inner thigh through his pants. Bruce can’t suppress a shiver, but lets the hand that was touching Tony’s head drop to his side

Finally, Tony leans back. ‘Okay, I’m ready. Nike just do it.’

‘You sure?’

Tony looks up at him. He’s beautiful like this. His lips are red and puffy, his pupils blown wide, his face glossy with sweat. He makes eye-contact with Bruce and nods. ‘Super sure.’

‘Okay, squeeze my thigh if you need me to stop, all right?’

Tony nods, moving his right hand to Bruce’s thigh.

Bruce takes a moment to caress Tony’s cheek. Tony is so beautiful it’s surreal, and he’s kneeling right here in front of Bruce, putting his trust in Bruce’s hands.

He moves his hand from Tony’s cheek to the back of his head and uses his other hand to guide his cock into Tony’s mouth. He slides in slowly and Tony’s throat just _gives_. Bruce pulls back out and thrusts in again, trying to give Tony time to adjust. He sets a slow pace and Tony moves his hand from Bruce’s thigh to the vibrator, so that he has both hands behind his back.

He really seems to be able to take it, so Bruce lets his thrusts become more shallow. Between Bruce’s own soft breathing and the hum of the vibrator, it’s still quiet enough for him to keep track of Tony’s breathing.

He quickens his pace, but makes sure to pull out far enough that Tony can breathe, fucking just Tony’s mouth. Tony’s face is growing redder with the second. Bruce knows he must be close by now, and to Bruce’s surprise, he is, too.

He stills, so that his cock is resting just on Tony’s tongue. ‘Put the vibrator against your prostate, Tony,’ he says quietly and he waits for a jolt to go through Tony’s body, indicating that he’s done what Bruce asked before he thrusts in again. 

He keeps his thrusts shallow and fast, not leaving Tony’s throat. 

Tony’s whole body is shaking when his second orgasm hits him. He doesn’t make a sound because he can’t get in enough air past Bruce’s thrusts, but he doesn’t squeeze Bruce’s thigh and he’s trusting Bruce and he’s getting off on this, on the vibrator and the dick in his mouth, so far down his throat that he can’t breathe and just like that, Bruce is coming, too, spilling inside the condom, slowly going soft in Tony’s mouth. He pulls out and Tony is completely soft, too, though he hasn’t taken out the vibrator yet.

Bruce takes off the condom, tucks his cock back in and sinks down on the couch, keeping his eyes on Tony, who leans sideways, against the couch and presses his face into the cushions while he rides out his orgasm, pushing the vibrator as far as it will go while he curls in on himself, his breath coming out in short gasps. He switches off the vibrating function and thrusts the dildo in and out a couple of times before he pulls it out.

He hands are shaking and he sets it down on the rug behind himself.

Bruce pats the couch beside him and Tony takes a couple more seconds to get his breathing under control before he joins Bruce on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this, comments are always welcome!


	8. First Attempt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters today because they're both tiny. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure whether posting on Sunday or Saturday is going to work best now that school is starting again, so I might switch a couple of times, but I'll still post a chapter every single week!
> 
> The only warning for this chapter is that there's some kissing that could be interpreted as dub-con, depending on how you look at it, but I don't think it'd be triggering to anyone. If you think it might trigger you/make you uncomfortable, you can always hit me up on tumblr (hungryface) to ask for more details!

‘Will you get mad if I kiss you?’, Tony asks, leaning heavily against Bruce. His voice is hoarse from what they just did. He’s openly staring at Bruce’s lips, his thick lashes casting a shadow on his cheeks. He’s still fully naked and shiny with sweat. Bruce doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone look more beautiful than Tony looks right now, except maybe Betty.

‘I won’t get mad. I’ll just push you away,’ Bruce mumbles, watching Tony’s eyes as they look up at Bruce’s, then back at Bruce’s lips.

Tony turns his head and kisses Bruce’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’ He brings one of his hands up to stroke Bruce’s chest trough the sweater he’s still wearing. Bruce only lets him for a moment before he pulls Tony’s hand away. He does hold on to his wrist, rests their hands in Tony’s lap.

Bruce doesn’t react to Tony’s question. Tony already knows the answer.

Tony presses a kiss to Bruce’s collarbone. ‘Would it be so bad if I kissed you?’

Bruce shrugs and Tony sits up a little. ‘Mostly it’d be bad for you. ‘Cause you’d start getting ideas.’

Tony searches his face for a long moment. ‘You’ve made it abundantly clear that I shouldn’t get any ideas, though.’

‘I have.’ It comes out faintly. Bruce’s mouth is too dry, but he doesn’t want to get up and away from Tony’s warmth at his side for a glass of water.

‘So that’s not the reason I shouldn’t kiss you.’

‘I don’t want you to.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

Bruce lets go of Tony’s wrist, pulling away enough that Tony and him aren’t touching anywhere. The side Tony was leaning against feels cold right away. ‘You have to believe that, Tony. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me feel like shit.’

‘Why?’

‘I already have a fucking psychiatrist.’ He doesn’t talk to her about his sex life a lot, though. 

‘I can kiss you now and then you can tell your psychiatrist how it made you feel and you two can figure it out.’

‘I’d hoped you’d be fucking tired by now. Do you wanna go again or something?’

‘I just want to kiss you, then I’ll sleep.’

‘You know coercion isn’t cool, right?’

‘It’s a kiss! I kiss my friends all the time! And we just had sex! I don’t get how sex is less of a big deal to you than kissing.’

‘You do?’ The thought somehow makes him feel incredibly lonely.

‘What?’

‘Kiss your friends?’

Tony grabs a blanket and wraps it around himself, apparently getting cold, which isn’t surprising since he’s still naked. ‘Yeah. Usually not when we’re sober, but sure. We’re all touchy drunks. Except Natasha, I guess, but she gets sort of – like she keeps saying that we all deserve so much love and she kisses everyone, too, so that counts.’ 

Bruce’s head gets stuck on the image of Natasha and Thor kissing for a moment.

Thor and Tony.

Natasha and Tony.

Shit.

He isn’t sure who he’s the most jealous of.

‘I even saw Clint and James kiss once. And I’m a hundred percent sure that Natasha and James have kissed, too, but I’ve never managed to catch them at it. Isn’t that tragic?’

‘Have you ever kissed him?’

‘Nope. He’s really intimidating.’ Tony grabs another blanket to better cover his legs. ‘And there’s the whole thing where I had a crush on his husband, right? Did you kiss him, when you guys had sex?’

Bruce shakes his head. ‘He’s really – like, passionate. He kissed me everywhere, but I asked him not to kiss me on the lips.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t like it.’

‘But that just doesn’t make any sense. You kissed me the first time we fucked, right? And you have to have kissed other people before that. Because you were good at it.’

Bruce shrugs. ‘It’s not always the same when you kiss someone. It’s different when it’s-’

‘With me?’

‘- intimate.’

‘Is it because of trauma or something?’

Bruce shakes his head. There’s a lot of weird shit about him that can be attributed to the way he grew up, but not this. He has no idea why kissing Tony seems so scary to him. The only person he ever felt comfortable kissing after hooking up is Betty, so maybe it has to do with her. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But then why?’

‘It doesn’t matter, okay?’

‘It does! Kissing is one of the best things on earth, okay? You deserve to enjoy it.’

‘Let’s just go to sleep.’

‘No! Your happiness is important!’

‘What does kissing have to do with happiness?’

‘It makes you feel connected to people, right? And being connected to people makes you happy.’

That sounds overly simplistic to Bruce. Being connected to people is stressful and scary and has never made Bruce feel particularly happy before. Even Betty didn’t. Hopeful, yes, but never happy. ‘Let’s just drop it, okay? I’m tired.’

Tony frowns and pulls Bruce down from the couch so that they can lie down facing each other on the rug. It’s intimate, Tony staring right into his eyes in the place where they just had sex. Bruce studies Tony’s hairline, the white of the couch behind Tony’s head, his eyebrows, painfully aware that Tony is still looking at his eyes.

‘My dad would sign me up for all these random competitions because the kid of one of his associates was signed up too or something, and he wanted to prove his child was better. And mostly it were things I was shit at and I hated all of it because I always lost. Like photography and shit, who gives a fuck about photography? But anyway, my dad always told me I just had to pretend. Pretend to be someone who knows about photography, or pretend to be someone who isn’t afraid to sit in a canoe and go down a crazy waterfall. It’s not great advice for an eight year old who’s being used by his dad to humiliate his business partners, but it could work, right? Maybe if you pretend to be someone who enjoys kissing, you’ll eventually start actually enjoying it? When we first fucked you kissed me, too. It was intimate, then, too.’

‘I was just trying to make you feel good.’

‘And it didn’t make you feel bad?’

Bruce shrugs awkwardly, his shoulder digging into the rug. ‘That’s different. That was about you.’

Tony doesn’t say anything else. Bruce takes a while to make up his mind. It’s somehow scarier with Tony, scarier than with Bucky are some other one-time fling. They’ve fucked twice now. Bruce has met Tony’s friends and stayed at his apartment and he’s worried that they’re getting to the point where they can’t go back from this anymore. Where they can’t just suddenly stop talking to each other, because they know each other now. They’re not just random acquaintances anymore. Not just hook-ups.

It’s not even all that hard, imagining someone who’d love to kiss Tony. He used to be so obsessed with who he would have been had his life not been so fucked. He’d live in a suburb with his two parents and have friends and he would sleep over at their houses, hug them goodbye in the morning, trust them with secrets. He wouldn’t take meds and he wouldn’t walk with a limp and he wouldn’t have any scars. He’d be so fucking normal, so fucking calm. His psychiatrist wouldn’t keep trying to talk to him about PTSD. He wouldn’t even have a psychiatrist.

He’d never have gotten along with Blonsky. His first kiss would have been clumsy and awkward still, but he wouldn’t have had a black eye at the time. It wouldn’t have come right before the first time he had sex.

He leans in slowly, pushing himself up on one elbow to get a better angle. Tony doesn’t push, waits for Bruce to take initiative. It’s a soft kiss, quiet and sweet. Tony reaches up to stroke Bruce’s jaw, his other hand going to Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce’s own hand finds Tony’s hair. He knows Tony wants this to be romantic. Intense, but not heated. 

Bruce doesn’t like it. When he’s trying to get someone off, he knows what to do, but right now, he doesn’t have anything to focus on. Tony isn’t looking to get off. He just wanted Bruce to kiss him, which Bruce is already doing. He doesn’t really know what else he can do.

He pulls back eventually, laying down on his side like he did before.

‘That felt good, right?’, Tony asks, sounding breathless.

‘Yeah, yeah it did.’ Bruce doesn’t sound convincing, even to his own ears. 

Tony just gives him a sad smile, leaning forward to press his face into Bruce’s neck like some strange kind of hug. ‘Goodnight, okay?’

‘Goodnight.’


	9. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter are someone reacting violently to touch, scars, mentioned neglect/child abuse and implied self-harm.

They sleep in, stretched out next to each other on the rug. Both of them sleep on their stomachs. When Bruce wakes up in the middle of the night, his hand is lying over Tony’s. It takes longer than it should to pull away.

He’s awoken (later, when it’s already light outside) by a hand on his back. On his bare skin. 

For him it’s natural to swing out his arm. It’s not the most efficient way to take someone out, but for this one punch he has the element of surprise, so it’ll hurt anyway.

‘Fuck!’ He recognises the voice. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t safe.

He throws another punch, more coordinated this time. Someone tries to grab his arm. He pulls away and punches again. That’s not going to happen anymore. Never again.

‘I didn’t – Bruce what the fuck?’

He recognises the voice.

Someone tries to touch him again. He lashes out once more, with his elbow this time.

‘Stop it! Fucking shit!’

The person is gone. Bruce doesn’t see anyone anymore. Just a room full of inanimate non-threats.

He sinks down onto the couch. He recognised the voice. He recognises the room.

He’s at Tony’s. He just punched Tony. He’s so stupid.

He tries to catch his breath, but it doesn’t quite even out. His knuckles are split (they were already, but the wounds have reopened now). Tony is probably hurt.

‘Are you done?’, Tony asks from the door to his bedroom. There’s a bit of blood that has run from his nose over his chin and one of his cheeks is unnaturally red, but he looks okay otherwise.

‘I’m sorry,’ Bruce says. His voice sounds pathetic even to his own ears.

‘You went a little crazy there,’ Tony says. He sounds wary, but he walks back into the living room. Slowly, as if he doesn’t want to scare Bruce. ‘Why?’

‘I woke up – from your hands on me. And I reacted.’

‘Clearly. I’ll get the first-aid kit.’

He disappears into the bathroom and returns with a red box. He takes a seat next to Bruce and starts bandaging the knuckles of Bruce’s right hand. Bruce awkwardly uses his left hand and a cotton pad with hydrogen peroxide to clean the blood off Tony’s face.

‘So no touching you before you’re awake?’

Bruce nods. They’re both quiet for a while.

‘Did you look under my sweater?’, Bruce asks then. His voice doesn’t sound quite right. He’s not sure if he still wants to be around Tony if he did.

‘No, I just put my hand underneath. Is it that bad?’

Bruce just nods.

‘Do you have a really weird birthmark or something? Or is it just scars?’

‘Scars. You must have felt them.’

Tony looks at Bruce’s chest for a while. ‘They feel like someone really fucked you up. Was it your dad?’

Bruce nods. ‘Yeah.’ His voice barely comes out.

‘But I’ve seen those on your legs. That doesn’t make sense right?’

‘Those scars are different. This…’ He traces a finger over his upper thigh, where he knows there’s a wide scar. ‘I did this to myself. It means I’ve gotten low, that I still do sometimes. But I’m still alive, I’m not there right now, and if I am, it’s my choice, no one else can do this to me. It’s not like that with the other scars.’

‘What are they like, then?’

‘They’re a reminder that someone hated me enough to make me look like this. That they hated me so much that it left marks that won’t leave my skin for as long as I live. The only reason he didn’t kill me was because I wasn’t worth the trouble. That’s not really something you wanna show off. Or be reminded of.’

Tony looks heartbroken. Bruce is still surprised, somehow, that they are invested in each other’s lives. That they care about each other. It doesn’t make sense to him. ‘Shouldn’t I kiss them? Isn’t that a cute thing people do?’

‘I don’t keep you around to do cute things.’

‘Well the only reason I keep you around is for your chest hair and I never even get to see it.’

Bruce doesn’t say anything. His chest hair is weird and patchy because there’s scar tissue that prevents it from growing in some places. He doesn’t really want to be reminded of that mess.

Tony picks up Bruce’s hand and moves it to a scar on his shoulder. It’s stretched out in a familiar way: a small child’s scar, wrapped around the bones of an adult. ‘My dad accidentally closed the trunk of the car while I was standing too close. The edge of the trunk came down on my shoulder. Fractured the joint. Lots of surgery.’ 

He moves Bruce’s hand a little further, to the side of his ribs. Burn scar, fairly large. ‘My dad accidentally spilled a boiling pot of coffee over my side.’ 

He moves Bruce’s hand to the small of his back. Long lines, running horizontally one over the other, like someone had just kept slashing into him. ‘The man who did this to me was head of R&D and a part of my dad’s inner circle before he was fired and sent to jail. Our lawyers are good. He got life for something he should have done fifteen years for at the most.’ 

He moves Bruce’s hand to the inside of his upper arm. A long, wide, messy scar. ‘I fell off a thing in the playground. My dad was supposed to be watching me.’ 

Then his knees, littered in little scars. ‘I slipped and fell into broken glass. My dad had broken a bottle in the hallway right outside my room and the cleaning lady had already left, so he just left it there and I didn’t see.’

There’s thin, precise cuts on his ribs, but he skips those. Bruce knows what those are from. 

He moves Bruce’s hand to the big scar in the middle of his chest. Bruce can feel his pulse underneath. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like Tony trusting him so openly, letting his guard down so completely. ‘A car bomb meant for my dad exploded and there was all this shrapnel in my chest. I almost died. Most of the scarring isn’t even from the explosion, it’s from surgery. I stayed in the hospital for nearly a month.

‘My point is that people may not have been as cruel to me as they have been to you, but I’ve been hated and neglected plenty. I don’t want people to know that. I don’t want to be reminded of that. But you don’t have to explain yourself to anybody. I’ve told people all kinds of shit about this scar.’ He squeezes Bruce’s hand, which is still laying over Tony’s chest. ‘That my heart exploded when I first saw them, that someone shot me in the chest with a bazooka, that I did surgery on myself, that I have the first-ever mechanical heart. Hell, I’ve told people it’s none of their fucking business. Because it isn’t anyone’s business, okay? If you ever want to show your scars, you won’t have to explain yourself to anyone.’

Bruce nods. He moves his hand, which is still covered by Tony’s hand, to the side of Tony’s neck. He presses a quick peck to Tony’s lips, then gathers his clothes and locks himself in the bathroom.


	10. Thor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might edit this more later. I've edited this pretty toroughly a couple weeks ago, but knowing me, I'll find a ton of mistakes when I read this again tomorrow. Right now, though, my brain has quite a bit of wine in it.  
> I'm adding the next little chapter, too, it's really short and sort of goes together with this one, really.

Bruce mostly sticks to himself the following days. He only responds to Tony’s texts when he can think of something to say, which isn’t often, and that’s really the only contact he has with anybody.

He gets a job fixing bicycles. He tries to work 30 hours a week, which is tiring and proves to be unsustainable right away. He cuts back to twenty-six, then to twenty when he can afford it. He doesn’t want the job to mess up his grades, but he also doesn’t want to starve.

He doesn’t have time to go out until two weeks later. He has work the next day, so he sticks to beer and avoids any of the strong stuff. A couple of times, he considers texting Tony, knowing he’d be at the party in under half an hour, but he doesn’t want to seem desperate or lonely.

He dances once he’s drunk enough to enjoy it, makes out with a girl because she asks permission first. He’s tired and he needs to sleep and he hasn’t really had more than four hours of rest per night for weeks, but his entire body feels like it’s thrumming with electricity and when he’s alone in the dark that just turns into fear. And fear always turns into anger.

He’d spotted Thor a couple of times before, but hadn’t really thought to go up to him. They’ve only met once, and even then it’s not like they know each other.

The girl he was kissing wants to go upstairs, but Bruce doesn’t want that, so they stay right there to kiss some more, then go their own ways. Bruce is heading outside to smoke, but is stopped by a hand on his shoulder.

‘Bruce!’, someone shouts into his ear, and he can’t help flinching. 

It turns out to be Thor, who apparently thinks it isn’t weird to come op to Bruce.

‘I’m heading out for a smoke,’ Bruce tells him, gesturing at the door behind himself.

To his vague surprise, Thor follows him outside and sits down on the curb beside him. He even takes the cigarette Bruce offers him. He’s pretty sure they’re Tony’s cigarettes. He tries not to smoke too often, which is why he hasn’t run out yet, even though it’s been two weeks since he last saw Tony.

‘I don’t smoke,’ Thor says. ‘Except weed and this cigarette.’

Bruce just nods. He’s been wanting to smoke a joint, even if it were just a couple hits, for so long now. Being high makes everything feel okay in a way alcohol never will, but he feels too guilty spending money on that right now. He knows that Blonsky would give him some for free, but Blonsky lives halfway across the country and their last two-sentence text conversation dates back four months.

Thor and him smoke in companionable silence for a while, staring at the empty, well-lit street. Bruce is somewhat surprised that Thor, who was so loud and present at McDonald’s can be so silent so easily.

‘Tony thinks you’re avoiding him,’ Thor says finally. ‘You seem like the type to be upfront about not wanting to be around someone.’

‘I’m not avoiding him,’ Bruce says. He was really trying. He’s probably texted Tony more in these last weeks than he has texted anyone in his entire life, even Betty, since they mostly call.

‘It’s not your fault, that he thinks that. Tony acts like he’s very confident, but he finds it hard to believe anyone could care about him. Do you care about him?’

‘I –‘ Bruce wants to explain that Tony deserves better, that Bruce is a burden, that it’s better if he never talks to Tony again. ‘Yeah.’

Thor nods. 

Bruce doesn’t want to go back to his apartment yet, but now that he’s stepped out of the party, he doesn’t want to go back to it either. The loudness of it, the closeness. He gets up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he says. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to sleep. It’s four am by now, so he really should be, but his mind is treacherous, keeping him awake when he doesn’t want to be.

Thor gets up, too. ‘I’ll drive you.’ He walks back to the house to actually put his cigarette butt in the ashtray on the porch before he comes back to stand beside Bruce. ‘I’m completely sober.’

Bruce wants to come up with some reason why Thor driving him is unnecessary, but really, he came here by a bus that doesn’t drive at night and his apartment is across town. Betty’s talked to him a billion times about allowing people to help him, so he figures for once he should.

‘I live at the dorms,’ he says. ‘If that’s not too far away.’

Thor smiles. ‘It’s no problem.’ He walks towards a huge black Range Rover that Bruce has to pretty much climb into. 

‘I’ve never seen you around the dorms before,’ Thor says.

Bruce shrugs. ‘It’s not like I hang out in the hallways,’ he says.

‘But Steve and Clint should’ve met you at some point, right? Steve has moved in with James, but he still stayed there for years.’ Thor starts the car. It’s impressive how he handles a car that’s so ridiculously big so smoothly, almost elegantly.

‘I don’t live in the dorms, just near them,’ Bruce concedes eventually.

‘Oh,’ Thor says. ‘You don’t want me to know where you live. I should’ve realised. I’m sorry for pressing.’

Bruce doesn’t really know what to say for a moment. ‘It’s not like that,’ he manages eventually. ‘I didn’t tell Tony either.’

Thor glances at him, then back at the road. ‘Why?’

Bruce hunches in on himself a little. He isn’t even sure if other people would see his apartment the same way he does. They’d see his clothes strewn around, the stains in the carpet, the dust everywhere. Not the bed his father slept in, the desk his father studied at, the apartment his father lived in. They wouldn’t see his father anywhere, wouldn’t smell him. ‘It’s not a good place to live. I don’t want anyone to drop by or come in or anything.’

‘You can sleep over at mine, if you don’t like being there,’ Thor proposes after only a few seconds, like Bruce isn’t a stranger.

Bruce shakes his head. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘Of course I do. I have the biggest bed there is. Or you could sleep in Loki’s room, it’s always pretty clean. He only sleeps there a couple times a month. Once Steve stayed at my house for a month, when James was overseas. And Clint for a week, not sure why. Even Natasha has been my guest many times. And Tony, too.’

‘It’s –‘ Bruce knows he’s fidgeting, but he doesn’t really know what to do about it. ‘I don’t want to be an inconvenience.’

The car comes to a stop. To Bruce’s surprise, they’re already at the dorms. ‘You are not. I’d be honoured if you were to sleep over. So are you?’

Bruce hesitates for a moment, but his mind can’t come up with any other reasons why he should say no. If Thor turned out to want something other than to just sleep, Bruce wouldn’t actually mind. If he was going to have a nightmare, he’d sleep in Loki’s room. He could always just leave if he really didn’t want to be there anymore. 

‘Yeah, okay.’

So Thor drives away from the dorms. His house isn’t that far away and Bruce is surprised that it’s an actual house, not an apartment. There’s a porch and a porchlight and everything. The inside of the house is modern, with floor-to-ceiling windows and lots of black and white. 

Thor pours both of them a glass of water. He turns on the TV, which is showing a stand-up comedian Bruce doesn’t recognise.

‘You can go first getting ready for bed,’ Thor says. He shows Bruce to a bedroom which is on the ground level as well. His bed really is huge. Three people could probably sleep on it without touching even a little bit. ‘There’s sleeping clothes in this drawer. Just pick whatever you’re comfortable in. The bathroom’s through there. There’s spare toothbrushes under the sink.’

Bruce nods and waits for Thor to close the bedroom door before he walks over to the drawer Thor pointed out to him. He takes his time going through the clothes (there’s a lot) and eventually finds a long sleeved shirt. Both the sleeves and the body are way too long on him, but he likes that it covers up his upper body entirely. He finds shorts that go all the way to his knees and can be fastened with a cord so that they fit around his waist despite having been made for Thor’s. He goes into the bathroom to pee, wash his face and brush his teeth, then returns to the living room, where Thor is still watching the comedian.

Thor just smiles at him and goes into the bedroom to take his turn getting ready. He’s done much quicker than Bruce was, dressed in a tight shirt and shorts that are a little too short on him. Thor is beautiful to the point where he doesn’t even seem real anymore, but Bruce tries not to dwell on that for too long.

He joins Thor in the bedroom, feeling like maybe he’s finally going to be able to sleep.

‘Tony said you never let anyone touch you.’

Bruce nods.

‘Doesn’t that get lonely?’

Bruce nods again.

‘Did Tony tell you a lot about me?’ He’s not sure if he minds, but he’s sure that he will by morning, even if Tony hasn’t said anything beyond what Thor has already mentioned.

‘Not that much. Not directly. He keeps checking his phone but despite all the notifications he has, he never actually looks at any, like there’s a person he wants to answer and that person isn’t answering. He was really cuddly when he came over a couple of days ago. Clint was there, too, was teasing him that he was getting enough cuddles from you already, Tony made it pretty clear he didn’t. He was looking up stuff about eating disorders on my computer. Sleeping disorders as well. And he wanted to buy shirts that aren’t even his size.’

‘How do you know any of that has to do with me?’

‘You’re the only person he’s liked this much in a while.’ Thor smiles slightly. ‘And I checked his messages. Sometimes curiosity gets the better of me.’

Bruce frowns. ‘I don’t actually have a sleeping disorder. I checked.’ He asked his psychiatrist once, but that was a long time ago. He could have one by now. And he definitely has some kind of eating disorder. He didn’t ask her that, though. She’d have wanted to talk about it.

‘You’re not gonna try and get me to talk about that, though, right?’

Thor shrugs. ‘I don’t mind listening if you want to talk. Or helping out. If you’re lonely.’

Bruce knows he should accept Thor’s implicit offer. It’s better than curling around Tony for a night. Because Tony would start falling for him. He seems like the type who falls for someone simply because they give him attention. And Tony shouldn’t fall for him. Bruce isn’t worth the trouble.

Thor seems like someone who knows he’s loved, who doesn’t depend on other people’s attention as much as Tony does. He would never fall for someone like Bruce. 

‘Okay,’ Bruce manages.

He gets under the covers while Thor goes to turn off the light. He leaves the curtains open, so the room isn’t too dark.

‘How bad are you with touch exactly?’, Thor asks while he crawls into the bed beside Bruce. Bruce just makes a questioning sound. He’d never have pegged Thor for someone so observant. ‘Tony asked Clint if anyone ever touched him in a way that triggered him, and if he reacted violently. So I’m assuming you reacted violently to touch at some point,’ Thor explains.

‘If I can see you when I wake up, I’ll be fine. It’s just if you’re behind me or over me. Or if you’re restraining me.’

‘Okay, then we’re gonna have to – have some boundaries. If you’re in anyway uncomfortable, you pull away. If you can’t pull away but you want to, you wake me up. If you’re uncomfortable with the way I’m touching you, but you want to keep touching you, you just tell me, and I’ll adjust.’

There’s a silence for a while. No one has ever been this considerate. Blonsky and him have used safe words before, but that was for actual possibly dangerous kinks they hadn’t tried before, not for a fucking hug. Bruce doesn’t know if he should be happy that Thor cares enough to make sure he doesn’t trigger Bruce, or sad that he’s so broken that he needs someone to be this cautious with him. ‘Okay,’ Bruce whispers.

‘You wanna take initiative?’, Thor asks into the silence.

Bruce does, shuffling closer to Thor, who is lying propped up on one elbow. He sinks down when Bruce comes closer and stretches one arm out to make space for Bruce against his chest. Bruce pulls Thor’s other arm around him, and Thor strokes his back. Thanks to the exhausting day, he falls asleep pretty quickly.


	11. Short Morning

Bruce wakes up before Thor does, but stays in Thor’s arms for a while. They seemingly didn’t move much at night. Thor is lying on his side now, but his arms are still wrapped tightly around Bruce, his face buried in Bruce’s hair. They’re both sweaty for sharing warmth all night and they kicked the blanket to the bottom of the bed.

He’s not holding Bruce too tight for him to pull out of the embrace, so eventually he does. He can’t say he didn’t enjoy the contact, but he’s sort of glad to be away from it, too. Being alone makes more sense to him. He’s always going to be more comfortable if he doesn’t have to think about anyone else. He’d have to double his thoughts to be able to make sense of it, he’d have to add that person to everything on his mind. It’s scary and exhausting and he doesn’t get how people can handle it long enough to love each other, to get married and have kids.

He goes to the kitchen to down a glass of water, then moves on to the coffee maker, which is as overly complicated as Tony’s. The only difference is that Tony’s coffee pads are stacked right behind it, while in this kitchen, coffee pads seem nowhere to be found.

Bruce is still going through the cupboards when across the large room, the front door opens. A black-haired guy enters. His clothes are clean and expensive looking, but he’s unnaturally pale and has dark bags under his eyes. He looks dead on his feet.

He frowns at Bruce, then walks over to him. ‘Thor doesn’t usually sleep with people who look as smart as you,’ he has, and his accent is much more distinctive than Thor’s. ‘Or as ugly.’

Bruce is very aware that objectively speaking, he isn’t very attractive, but his father has made it abundantly clear that his outward appearance is the least of his worries. It wasn’t his face that made his father think of him as a freak. It wasn’t his looks that his father tried to beat out of him. His face is probably the part of him that’s least fucked up.

‘Um, thanks? Do you know where the coffee pads are?’

The guy scoffs. ‘You don’t know how to make coffee,’ he says. His tone is disdainful. It reminds Bruce a little of the lawyer who tried to argue Bruce was guilty of murder. He kept using the word _patricide_.

Before Bruce can react, he walks over to the cupboard opposite the coffee maker and gets out a white bowl with a lid. He scoops coffee beans – actual beans – into the top of the coffee maker and gets busy with all of the buttons. It takes a couple of minutes, but eventually he hands Bruce a cup of coffee and cradles the other one in his hands.

‘Did he tell you you’re special yet?’

‘What?’

The guy – Bruce is assuming this is the infamous Loki, Thor’s brother – doesn’t seem to enjoy repeating himself. ‘Thor. Did he tell you you’re special?’

‘I just slept over. We didn’t fuck.’

‘Such a big heart he has,’ Loki says. ‘So much space for secrets.’

Bruce doesn’t know what that means, but doesn’t really care. Loki leaves for upstairs with a slight grin on his face.

Bruce drinks two cups of coffee before Thor wakes up (the really good one Loki made and a sort of okay one he himself managed).

Thor’s eyes look small from sleep and he’s still so beautiful, his hair all messy and his shorts too short, showing off his beefy tighs.

‘I have work soon,’ Bruce says while Thor is fixing himself a cup of coffee, too.

They take turns showering and watch TV for a bit. Thor hugs Bruce before he leaves and Bruce doesn’t stop him.


	12. Date

Bruce only sees Tony again three days after sleeping over at Thor’s.

Tony skips class pretty often. The last weeks were no exception, and even when he did turn up, he came in late and left during break, never even looking in Bruce’s direction.

He’s late this time, too, and takes a seat in the back like he usually does. The difference is that this isn’t a class Bruce and Tony share. As far as Bruce knows, Tony doesn’t take this class at all. Even if he does, Organic Chemistry seems like a strange course for an Engineering major to attend.

During the break, Tony doesn’t leave, so Bruce does the awkward thing and goes to sit beside him.

Tony glances at him, then back at his phone, which he’s probably been on for the entire first half of the class. ‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ Bruce returns.

Tony looks tired. He’s wearing a thick wool sweater, despite it being a pretty warm day for this time of year. Bruce has noticed before that Tony wears warm clothes no matter the weather, but he doesn’t feel like it’s his place to comment on it.

‘Are you changing majors?’, Bruce asks.

Tony frowns slightly at his phone screen, then glances at the front of the class, as if remembering where he is.

‘Oh. No, I was just here.’

‘Why?’

Tony shrugs. ‘I like this lecture hall. It’s… airy.’

He doesn’t sound convincing, but Bruce figures this isn’t any of his business anyway. 

They don’t say anything else to each other and class starts again a couple of minutes later. Bruce pays attention while Tony scrolls through his phone.

‘You wanna get dinner?’, Tony asks when the professor announces the class is almost over and everyone already starts packing their bags.

Bruce’s job has gotten him in a less scary financial situation, but still not the kind of situation where he can be spending over a couple of dollars on dinner. He doesn’t really know a way of asking Tony how expensive the place he has in mind is without dragging attention to the fact that Bruce is broke, so it’s safest not to go.

He shrugs. ‘I still have leftovers.’

‘Those can wait ‘till tomorrow, right? Come on, my treat and everything.’

‘You don’t have to pay for me.’

‘I do, on principle. The only person I never pay for is Thor, because his dad is richer than my dad. And that time I went partying with Cara Delevingne, because she’s crazy rich, too.’

Bruce feels like Tony expects him to know who Cara Delevingne, but he has no idea. Maybe she’s one of the girls Tony always mentions but never actually talks to.

‘It’s just a really good Italian restaurant in Boston. It’s only like a half an hour’s drive. And it’s not even expensive, I think. It’s like fifteen bucks for a plate of pasta, that’s not a lot, right?’

It sounds like a lot to Bruce, but he doesn’t say that. He has fifteen bucks in his bank account. He’ll just have to take a couple extra shifts. He doesn’t have too many things due in the next few weeks, so he can handle it despite schoolwork.

Bruce nods and Tony smiles, though it sort of seems muted. He really looks like he hasn’t been sleeping much. Not that Bruce is doing much better.

‘Is it okay if you drive, though? I’m eighty percent coffee right now and my hands are sort of shaky,’ Tony says.

Bruce just takes Tony’s keys from him and follows him to Tony’s car, which is the same one as the one he was driving when they first met. It’s raining, but not too badly. Tony runs to the car anyway.

Tony puts on the GPS function on his phone and nods off while Bruce follows the directions into town. He ends up at a nice, classic-looking Italian place without any trouble. His only problem is that Tony’s still asleep.

‘Hey, um, hey, Tony.’ Bruce knows how much he himself hates to be touched while waking up, but he’s pretty sure Tony doesn’t, since it didn’t even occur to him not to touch Bruce last time. So Bruce carefully shakes his shoulder, ready for a blow the way he’d expect one from Blonsky when waking him up.

Tony just startles slightly and looks around, his eyes finding Bruce. ‘Oh,’ He says. ‘Fell asleep again. ‘m sorry.’ He yawns, blinks a couple times and then gets out of the car. 

Bruce follows him into the restaurant, where a waiter who seems to know Tony already leads them to a table. The restaurant is packed, but the table they’re seated at is quiet, out of the way. Tony orders a bottle of white wine and the waiter doesn’t even ask for his ID.

‘Does everyone just let you buy booze even though you’re underage?’, Bruce asks when the waiter leaves.

‘That’s only here. I’m pretty sure my dad promised them he’d make sure they wouldn’t get in trouble. I think he wants me to be an alcoholic, too. Sometimes he sends bottles of bourbon over to my apartment. But I can just ask Steve or Thor. Even Bucky if I’m desperate. Or Sam. Have you met Sam? He’s Steve’s friend. He’s really adorable and really hot at the same time. But don’t tell him I said that. He’d be so smug about it. How about you?’

‘What?’

‘You’re not twenty one yet.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I don’t think you’d keep seeing me if I was so much younger than you. So you’re probably not that old, right?’

‘I’m turning twenty-one in December.’

‘So how do you get booze? I’m sure your dad –‘ Tony cuts himself off, looking almost ashamed for a moment. Bruce hasn’t told Tony much about his parents, so he’s not sure why Tony thinks he shouldn’t mention Bruce’s dad. He’s mentioned that his dad hurt him. That’s not enough to explain Tony’s look of shame, tough. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen you hang out with a lot of people.’

‘Blonsky used to buy me booze, but he graduated. He brings me stuff when he comes to visit, though. And I just ask people, after I’ve had sex with them or something. And at frat parties no one checks IDs.’

He hasn’t had much alcohol that he’s paid for himself in a while, though. It’s too expensive and it’s not a priority right now.

Tony nods. The waiter brings them the bottle of wine, a bottle of water and two menus. Before leaving, he fills both their glasses with wine.

Tony drinks half of his right away.

Bruce gingerly picks up the menu. He can’t tell if the wine is expensive, but knowing Tony, it probably is. He can try and lessen the damage by getting the least expensive dish on the menu, though. The caprese salad has a manageable price, but he’s worried that Tony’s going to notice if he just orders a starter. The spaghetti pomodoro is only a couple bucks more than the salad, though, so maybe that one is his best option.

‘Who is Blonsky?’, Tony asks.

‘Someone I grew up with.’ They don’t really have anything in common except for their childhood and upbringing. They’re not friends, they don’t even like each other. But Blonsky knows what Bruce’s father did to him, Bruce knows what Blonsky’s parents did to him. They’ve seen each other’s scars and traumas and fears. There’s no one in the world Bruce trusts more.

He knows Blonsky is going to come over soon, next month. It’s the only times they still see each other. Four times a year, on the anniversary of each of their parents’ deaths.

Tony looks like he wants to ask more questions, but Bruce interrupts him. ‘What are you gonna order?’

‘Spaghetti al vongole or the crab ravioli.’ Bruce likes how Tony pronounces the Italian words. He hasn’t heard enough Italian to know what any of the words are supposed to sound like, but Tony is at least trying not to butcher them.

Bruce can’t help but scrunch up his nose after checking on the menu what vongole are.

‘You don’t like seafood?’, Tony says, smiling.

‘No.’

‘Not even shrimp?’

‘Especially not shrimp! The texture is so gross.’

‘I cannot believe this. Is it just seafood or also fish?’

‘Fish is from the sea, too, so it’s just as disgusting.’

‘They’re going to kick you out of the restaurant for hating life.’

‘Loving seafood is hating life. Vongole? Those are the worst ones. They smell like dead – dead seaweed.’

‘I’ll order the crab ravioli, that just smells like butter.’

‘’Cause they needed all that butter to mask the crab taste.’

‘What are you taking, then?’

‘Tagliatelle pomodoro.’

‘That’s boring.’

‘It’s a classic.’

‘You have to try the lasagne! It’s really good. And it doesn’t even have seafood in it.’

‘It’s twenty bucks, though. You said fifteen.’

‘I’m paying, so it doesn’t matter.’

Just like that, the playful banter is over. ‘I don’t want you to pay for me.’

‘It’s just mathematical. This meal’s cost is a certain percentage of the money you have access to. It’s a way, way smaller percentage of the money I have access to. It’s like point zero zero zero zero… lots of zeros and then a five or something, like with Contador. It doesn’t make sense for you to pay.’

Bruce shrugs, figuring he’ll just pay for himself once they actually pay. 

‘Thor has this whole explanation. Because none of the others would ever let him or me pay for them, but basically his point is that “being able to provide yourself with your own hard earned cash” is something that’s really important in our culture and not really anywhere else. If you let someone else pay for you, you feel weak, but that’s just cultural conditioning, it’s all a social construct, blah blah. He’s very passionate about it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Thor passionate about something, but it’s definitely pleasant.’

‘I actually saw Thor a couple of days ago. He didn’t tell me anything about social constructs, though.’

The waiter comes over to take their orders. Tony looks at Bruce with those weirdly intense eyes he sometimes has. ‘You want the lasagne? It’s fifteen dollars for you, I’ll pay the difference. Because I got the prices wrong.’

Bruce sighs. Lasagne does sound delicious. ‘Okay.’

They each order their own dish, then Tony goes right back to their conversation. ‘So you saw Thor?’

‘He was at a party I went to.’

‘Any hot goss? Is he finally moving on from Jane? Has he been moving on with you specifically?’

‘I am a hundred percent sure he hasn’t been moving on with me, don’t know about anyone else. What Jane is he supposed to move on from? I know a Jane.’

‘Jane Foster, she’s an Astrophysics major.’

‘That’s the Jane I know. Why should Thor move on? She’s great.’

‘She wants to focus on getting her graduate degree, and then she wants to focus on her master’s degree, probably a doctorate after that, internships, a fancy job… It’s just not gonna happen.’

‘It should. They’re both weirdly sweet.’

Tony smiles and raises his glass. ‘Sweetly weird.’

There’s a silence Bruce doesn’t know what to with. They’ve been strangely normal so far. This isn’t like any of their other interactions. If anyone were looking on from the outside, they’d think Bruce and Tony were two mostly functional people on a second date.

‘Hey, have you ever been to California?’, Tony asks then.

It’s a question that sort of catches Bruce off guard. ‘I actually – I lived there for a while.’ Bruce grew up in Ohio, but moved in with his aunt and uncle in Los Angeles after his dad died. When Jennifer went to New York for law school and Bruce got his acceptance letter for MIT, his aunt and uncle decided to move to the east coast to be closer to them.

‘You did? Where?’

‘LA.’

‘I love LA.’

‘Did you live there, too?’

‘No, in Malibu, but my mom took me to LA almost every weekend. We should go sometime. I really miss it.’

‘You have a mansion there, too?’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s ridiculous. You have three mansions?’

‘No.’

‘You have more?’

‘We have six.’

‘Where?’

‘Well, there’s the one in Cambridge, the on outside New York, the one in Malibu, then a creepy haunted slavery-era mansion in Wisconsin because we have a ton of factories there, one in the south of France and one in Maine where my grandparents live. Oh and mom’s family has a house in Italy and one in Montenegro where we go sometimes.’

Bruce smiles. The wine is definitely helping him not to overthink the fact that he, broke and alone, is eating dinner with someone who is so well taken care of. Someone who has family on a different continent, family he actually knows enough to visit, someone who has a whole category of problems Bruce deals with daily, money problems, eliminated. ‘That’s crazy.’

Tony grins at him. ‘My dad would just buy random properties everywhere, but my mom makes him donate a lot of money. I want a place in South America, though. In Patagonia, like a cabin or something.’

‘You wouldn’t last two days in a cabin.’

‘I would! I would last at least, like, six days.’

‘Maybe if you had help. And wi-fi.’

‘You could come with! You could come live with me in Patagonia.’

‘Why Patagonia?’

‘It’s really pretty! Do you wanna go to California this weekend?’

‘I already have plans.’

‘Like work?’

‘I’m visiting family.’

‘Oh, that’s really cute, actually. Do you see them a lot?’

‘Every other week, usually.’ He hasn’t gone to see his aunt and uncle the last two weekends, but he told them it was because he was swamped with school work. He doesn’t want to tell them about having to get a job on top of everything, they’d want to pay for everything themselves, and they’ve already done so much for him. He couldn’t bear if they did any more.

‘Do have siblings?’

‘Nope. But I get along with my cousin pretty well. You’re an only child, too, right?’

‘Yep. Didn’t want to be an only child, but my dad managed to talk my mom out of having any more children.’

Their food arrives. The crab ravioli does mostly smell like butter and herbs, which is a relief, and the lasagne smells amazing. While they eat, the conversation thins out. They mostly talk about how good the food is. 

When they’re done eating, Tony asks for the bill right away. He’s been keeping himself awake by focusing on talking, but Bruce notices now that Tony looks like he could fall asleep any minute.

Tony stays true to his word and lets Bruce pay fifteen dollars. Tony pays everything else. ‘I’ll tell Thor to give you that rant,’ he says with a wink that’s as annoying as it is pretty.


	13. Not a Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another explicit chapter! The only warning I have for this one is that there's some slight references to abusive behavior at the end and that someone is pushed to do something they don't want to do (but doesn't give in)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

‘I can drive around for a while,’ Bruce proposes once they leave the restaurant. While they were inside, it stopped raining. Tony shrinks further into his sweater, away from the slightly chilly evening air. Bruce sort of wants to pull him close.

Bruce mostly proposes letting Tony nap while he drives because he doesn’t want to go back to his apartment yet, but also because he remembers how safe he felt falling asleep in the car with his aunt or uncle behind the wheel. He doesn’t know if it’s like that for everyone, but Tony looks dead on his feet and might just drink more coffee once he gets home. And since Tony paid for part his meal and all of the wine, he feels like at least he can do something in return. 

Tony shrugs. ‘It’s fine. I’ll just go home and nap.’

Bruce wants to protest. They both know Tony is about as good at taking care of himself as Bruce is. But it’s not his place. As weird and intense as their relationship so far has been, they’re not really friends. Bruce doesn’t have to right to tell Tony what’s good for him.

‘Okay,’ he says instead, and they get in the car.

Bruce can tell that Tony is trying to stay awake during the drive. He keeps blinking and trying to focus on the buildings outside. It feels like getting back to Tony doesn’t take that long. There’s only sparse traffic and all the lights they pass are green.

Bruce carefully parks the car. He’s not used to driving something so expensive. There’s nothing quite like the sound of an engine like this.

‘I’ll drive you home,’ Tony says.

‘I’ll walk. You can’t drive like this.’

‘Or you could stay?’

Bruce shakes his head. ‘That’s not a good idea.’

‘You have some real issues with bonding with people, you know that?’

‘This wasn’t a date, okay?’ Bruce hasn’t felt like this in a long time. Not since Betty. Caged, like he’s being pushed into a corner that he doesn’t want to be in, like his only option is to be something impossible, something he can never be.

‘Strangely it did feel like a date.’

‘Well, I’ll spare you the trouble of waiting for it, I’m not gonna call you. I’m not going to text you to tell you I had a nice evening. I’m not going to ask you out on a second date.’

Tony doesn’t seem angry as much as he’s just intense. ‘You’re so fucking scared that I’m trying to push you into some kind of relationship! As much fun as it was to talk like functional people for once, it’s pretty clear that you’re not interested in anything romantic happening. Friends can go for dinner, okay? Friends can fuck, even. I feel like we should maybe get that out of the way. I wanna hang out with you. Do you get that? I don’t need to be a relationship with you, I don’t even need to fuck, though that’d be nice once in a while. I just want you to stick around.’

Bruce doesn’t know what to say. People don’t want him to stick around. It wouldn’t make any sense. He’s a burden. He’s violent. Even on the meds he keeps feeling different every day, keeps swinging between that ridiculous hopefulness and the heavy dread and the empty detachment, which is probably the worst one. Blonsky sticks around because he’s family by now, the same goes for his foster parents. Jen doesn’t really stick around that much. And Betty did for a while, but even she left once things stayed crappy for too long. People shouldn’t stick around.

‘Bruce, come on. Just come inside.’

Bruce hadn’t realised it had started raining again. He still has no idea what to say, but he follows Tony inside.

His hair is wet. He’s sort of cold. Tony is shivering in front of him.

When Tony turns, Bruce expects it. He wanted it to happen. He takes another step, right into Tony’s space. ‘Just don’t kiss me. Not on the lips,’ he says into the quiet.

Tony doesn’t react, but Bruce has repeated that to him so many times by now that Tony won’t risk it right now, not when he’s getting what he wants.

Tony puts his lips against Bruce’s neck, his hands finding Bruce’s chest, staying there almost like he’s shy. He bites into the juncture of Bruce’s shoulder and neck, but pulls away when Bruce starts to push him towards the couch.

Tony’s skin is cold, so Bruce doesn’t take off any of his clothes this time, despite the layer of rain on them. Maybe it’s better like this, when neither of them is naked. Feels less like intimacy. Tony tries to turn around, but he stops when Bruce puts a hand on his back. He doesn’t move, legs pressed against the back of the couch, while Bruce gets the lube and a condom from the drawer under the TV.

‘I liked the not-talking thing,’ Tony says, when Bruce is still on the other side of the room, back turned.

‘You wanna do that again?’, Bruce asks, staring at the black TV screen. He’s conscious of his own voice, too low and quiet.

Tony doesn’t answer. Bruce turns back around, the lube and condom clasped in his hands. ‘Okay. You stay quiet until you’ve come, unless you want me to stop or back off.’

Tony nods. He’s got all his clothes on and he still looks vulnerable.

Bruce goes back to standing behind him. He reaches around to unzip Tony’s pants. ‘Bend over,’ he says into the quiet. Tony does right away, his sweater riding up to show the small of his back, his pants sliding down to his knees. He settles his elbows on the couch cushions, grabbing two pillows to put under his head. He presses his cheek into them, his eyes closed. 

The idea of someone trusting Bruce like this, trusting him so much that he doesn’t even have to keep an eye on what Bruce is doing, is still a little terrifying.

Bruce tries to ignore it and strokes a hand up Tony’s back, all the way to his shoulder blades, then drags it down again, digging in his nails. There’s goose bumps on Tony’s skin. Tony lets out a shaky breath. It’s weird that he doesn’t say anything. Bruce isn’t sure if he likes it.

Bruce kneels behind Tony. He’s had this done to him only two times, and he’s never done it himself before, but he’s hoping it’ll turn Tony on enough that he won’t care about Bruce’s lack of technique.

Bruce spreads Tony’s ass cheeks and Tony is already squirming just from feeling Bruce’s breath against his hole. Bruce presses his tongue to Tony’s perineum and licks upwards. Tony lets out a stuttering breath, his legs quivering. Bruce keeps going, encouraged by Tony’s reaction, licking and sucking, figuring out what works and what doesn’t.

Tony’s body is shaking when Bruce pulls back. He scratches the inside of Tony’s thigh and Tony lets out something that is half yelp, half moan. He’s thrusting his hips slightly, like he’s trying to stop himself but can’t quite manage it.

He’s relaxed enough that Bruce can slip a spit-slick finger in with ease. He could probably fit another one, but he doesn’t want to take things too fast. Tony moans when Bruce starts trusting, stopping every now and then to lick Tony’s rim, even pushing his tongue past it a couple of times.

He adds another finger and Tony has lost control over his movements by now. He’s clenching the pillows underneath him, thrusting back against Bruce’s fingers as much as he can, moaning loudly.

Sometimes he makes a noise like he’s about to say something, but he never does.

Bruce adds a third finger. With just spit, there’s much more friction, and it must burn at least a little, but Tony just moans like this is the best thing that’s ever happened to him. It must feel similar to the oversensitivity after an orgasm, and Tony gets off on that feeling, too. Bruce still stops to ask Tony if he’s okay. He only continues when Tony nods.

Bruce hasn’t really been aiming for Tony’s prostate until now. He pushes his fingers up against it just once, just to see Tony’s reaction. Tony cries out and arches his back, fingers curling into the pillows. Bruce really, really loves how much Tony enjoys this. 

Bruce pulls his fingers out to get the condom and lube where he left them at the side of the couch, but is stopped by Tony’s voice. ‘I wanna do this without lube,’ he says. His voice sounds wrecked. He’s out of breath and his hair is sweaty. Bruce can’t get over how beautiful he is.

Bruce moves so that he’s standing in Tony’s line of sight. ‘No,’ he says, despite how much that idea turns him on. Unintentionally hurting Tony is a definite turn-off.

‘The condom has lube on it. Just no additional lube. I can take it.’

Bruce takes a moment to think about it. He’s been fucked with just spit before. Tony is relaxed enough that it won’t actually hurt that much. It will burn a little, but not so much that it will overshadow the pleasure. And Tony really seems to want it. 

‘Okay,’ Bruce says eventually.

He holds three fingers in front of Tony’s lips and slides them into his mouth easily. Tony is sloppy licking at the taste of himself and Bruce’s spit. It gets the job done, though, and Bruce gets back to the other side of the couch to push his fingers into Tony’s ass again. Tony’s hole gives easily. He adds some more spit to make sure it really won’t hurt, then pulls on the condom.

He pushes in slowly. Tony’s breathing is short and loud, the only sound.

Bruce pulls out halfway, thrusts in again slowly. He builds a gentle rhythm and speeds up slightly when he finds Tony’s prostate.

Tony is moaning, arching his back, clenching the pillows. He reaches with one hand for his cock and starts stroking, his pace much faster than Bruce’s.

Bruce digs his nails into Tony’s ass cheeks, pressing down on his rim with his thumb. Tony’s breath hitches, but it’s not enough to push him over the edge.

So Bruce pulls him up, so that they’re pressed together front to back. He’s holding Tony up with one arm over Tony’s chest. His other hand goes to Tony’s throat. Tony’s breathing stutters. He tries to spread his legs more.

Bruce goes a little faster, and the friction is drying the spit because there’s more of a drag now. Tony doesn’t sound like he minds, though. He’s jerking his cock in quick, desperate motions. Bruce slams in hard, harder than before, bottoming out. At the same time, the hand around Tony’s throat closes, not enough to cut off Tony’s breath, but enough for him to feel it. Tony comes with a loud groan, head tipped back against Bruce’s shoulder. Tony’s hand is spasming slightly, so Bruce takes over, stroking him through his orgasm. He knows that Tony likes to be fucked beyond his orgasm, but Bruce doesn’t want to do that without lube.

They just stand there leaning against each other until Bruce pulls out. Tony climbs over the couch to lie down on it, not even bothering to pull up his pants and Bruce pulls off the condom, tucking himself back in, and heads for the bathroom.

‘Want me to suck that?’, Tony asks, voice hoarse from moaning. Bruce turns to look at him.

He’s referring to Bruce’s cock, which is still hard. ‘No,’ Bruce says.

Tony arches his back, hand drifting to his ass. ‘I don’t turn you on?’

‘Obviously you do,’ Bruce says, gesturing at the bulge in his pants.

‘But not enough for you to come?’ Tony spreads his legs, pulling up his knees a little. His hole is red and slightly swollen, nothing that won’t go away in a couple hours at most.

Bruce sighs. ‘I feel like we’ve had this conversation.’

‘I wanna have it again.’

‘I don’t.’

‘It’s just weird. I know a lot of people with all kinds of issues like yours, but all of them can come during sex.’

‘I guess I’m just unique,’ Bruce says. He wanted to sound mocking, but his voice just sounds flat. Plenty of people have told him he’s not normal. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It’s just not a fun thing to be reminded of.

Tony sighs. He’s still rubbing his hole absently. It’s sort of distracting. ‘At least don’t take a cold shower, then. Go jerk off on your own if you really don’t want me to be there, but don’t just wait for it to go away. Blue balls isn’t hot.’

Bruce turns back to the bedroom door.

‘Think of me, okay?’, Tony says from behind him.

Bruce pulls the bathroom door shut behind himself, then locks it for good measure and slides down his pants. He grips his cock, then thinks better of it and pulls off his sweater first. It’s much too hot. He’s quick about jerking himself off. There’s enough pre-come to slick the way and enough thoughts of Tony still fresh on his mind to pull him over the edge easily.

He doesn’t give himself a moment to come down, just washes his hands, then his cock and pulls his clothes back on. He takes a warm washcloth back into the living room.

Tony is where he left him. Bruce tosses the washcloth at him. Tony makes a show of cleaning himself up, looking at Bruce the whole time. Bruce ignores him. He gets two glasses of water. He downs the first one and sets the second one down on the coffee table next to Tony.

‘Shouldn’t you punish me?’, Tony asks. He’s pulled his pants back up and is cleaning off the couch.

‘What?’

Tony drops the washcloth and gets up. Bruce is still standing by the coffee table, so Tony ends up standing closer to him than he’d like. ‘Punish me. Because I talked. And I wasn’t allowed to talk.’

‘No,’ Bruce says right away. He’s never liked that kind of dynamic. Obedience can be nice, but not if it’s enforced by creepy, controlling behaviour like punishment and humiliation.

‘You should.’ Tony grabs Bruce wrists to lift his hands to Tony’s throat. ‘You should like, choke me. Or spank me. Or just hit me wherever.’

Bruce pulls his hands back. Tony grabs one, not letting Bruce pull it back this time. He presses it to his throat. It’s a perverted echo of the way Bruce grabbed Tony’s throat only minutes ago. He hadn’t meant that as punishment.

‘I never told you I’d punish you,’ Bruce says. His voice sounds strange to his own ears.

‘You told me to do something and I didn’t do it. That implies punishment.’ Tony presses Bruce’s hand down on his own throat harder. He looks calm, but his heart is beating like crazy underneath Bruce’s fingers. Bruce feels like he’s missing something, like he isn’t in on what’s really going on.

‘Do you _want_ punishment?’, he asks. His voice is unsteady.

Tony shrugs. ‘There should be punishment. Otherwise I’m never going to do anything you say again. ‘Cause there’s no consequences if I don’t do it.’

‘I’m not gonna punish you,’ Bruce repeats. He doesn’t think Tony is really listening.

Tony’s grip loosens on Bruce’s hand and Bruce pulls it away. 

‘But that doesn’t make any sense.’

‘It wouldn’t make sense to hurt you just for saying two sentences.’

‘It would! You told me not to talk!’ 

Bruce is confused. Tony seems angry now. His face is red and blotchy and his hands are balled into fists.

‘You’re just – This isn’t right. You’re not doing this right,’ Tony continues. His fists are visibly shaking. ‘Just get it over with.’

Bruce frowns. ‘Maybe it’s better if I go,’ he says. He’d wanted to leave before Tony sprung all of this punishment crap on him. He can’t help but feel a little bit guilty about it now that Tony seems so unstable. ‘Do you want me to call someone?’

Tony relaxes almost right away. One moment he looks ready for a fight, the next he looks tired, empty. ‘No. I’m going to bed.’ He turns away, heading towards the bedroom.

Bruce leaves, jogging home (and regretting it when his bad leg cramps up) after he’s made sure Tony’s lock clicked shut.

He doesn’t go to bed, but sits down in a corner to study. The hot water boiler on the other side of the wall is still on and it’s at least a bit of warmth in the chilly night.


	14. Leg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for chronic injury/pain and drug use (just weed, though) as well as discussion of suicidal thoughts and a suicide attempt.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Edit: as of the 7th of March 2018 I've made some slight changes to this chapter. Mostly I've just removed all the parts where Tony smokes weed. Someone in the comments pointed out to me that weed and antidepressants don't mix well, so I needed to change the chapter in light of that information.)

Bruce hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but the next thing he knows he’s shaking, cold to the core in the same corner where he sat down when he got to his apartment, textbook heavy in his lap. Only now there’s bright sunlight coming through the window and his neck feels like it’s been in the same position for a couple hours too long.

He tries to stretch his bad leg, but it hurts way too much. As expected it feels like the cold has seeped all the way into the old, healed cracks in his bones. The pained gasp he lets out is visible in the chilly air. He reaches over to his laptop and looks up the weather. The temperature had gone below 30 for a couple hours. Now it’s barely even over 40. He doesn’t want to waste money by turning the heating on, though.

He manages to get up without having to move his bad leg too much and moves to his bed, wrapping one of his blankets around his bad leg and the other around his shoulders. He could take a hot shower to get the cold from between his bones, but it would hurt like hell before getting better, and he’s not ready for that kind of pain right now.

Instead he tries to focus on homework while his leg gets slightly warmer. He doesn’t have work or class today, so luckily he will be spared from going outside, where it’s probably even colder than it is in his apartment.

He tries to do the exercises the physiotherapist used to do back when he could still afford her, but his leg hurts even from the slightest movement. He hopes it’ll go away once it gets warmer again. It’s very early spring, so the weather changes by the day.

So he resigns himself to sleeping through it. He doesn’t have any painkillers or even weed and he ran out of the homeopathic painkilling salve Betty got him weeks ago. He lies down on his bed after pulling the mattress cover off as an additional blanket. He curls up as much as he can with one leg that won’t bend or stretch, reaches up to pull the curtain shut and closes his eyes, hoping for once, he won’t have any nightmares.

He doesn’t fall asleep so much as he just closes his eyes and tries not to think about anything. He thinks about how much his leg hurts, then he distracts himself by thinking of something else, which means he’s thinking about Tony, to then in turn distract himself from that by thinking about his leg again.

He’s only gotten a little over two hours of that not-quite-sleep when his phone buzzes. He picks it up from where it’s lying on the floor beside his bed, checking the message.

Tony: _You comin over?_

He replies with a simple no and drops his phone again, trying to turn over but thinking better of it when his leg throbs painfully before he even moves at all. He’d hoped that Tony would at least explain why he made things so weird yesterday night, but on the other hand, he’d gladly never think of that messy conversation again.

Another text. Bruce lets himself doze for twenty minutes before he even bothers to look at it.

Tony: _Just to study. It’s no fun w/o you_

 _i’m busy_ , he texts back. He puts the phone next to his pillow, knowing Tony’s going to keep texting.

Tony: _Not true. You just don’t want to see me_

Bruce sighs. _you’re right. don’t want to fucking see you. leave me alone_

Tony: _Are you at your dorm? I’ll come pick you up. You won’t even have to go through the cold or anything_

Bruce doesn’t bother replying. It’s not like Tony gives a fuck what he says, he’s just going to keep doing what he wants to do.

Tony: _I’ll suck your dick and everything_

_i don’t want that.  
you can study with steve or natasha or smth_

Tony: _I wanna study w/you_

Bruce doesn’t reply.

Tony: _Clint says you don’t live at the dorms  
so where do you live?  
I could bribe the students records people_

Bruce buries his face in the pillow. Of course Tony actually means it when he says he’s going to come pick Bruce up. Giving in is still the easiest way to get Tony to shut up and Tony probably does put the heating in his apartment on. It’s also the only way to keep Tony from getting his full address.

_grove street. bring painkillers. or weed if you have any_

The drive from the dorms to his street is only five minutes or so, and he doesn’t want Tony to see what building he lives in, so he puts on shoes (he’s wearing an bright green sweater and bright purple sweatpants, but he’s not going to change out of that horrible combination just to sit on Tony’s couch), puts a couple of his textbooks and his laptop in a backpack and heads outside. Getting down the stairs with his uncooperative leg takes a while, and he only has to wait a minute or so before Tony pulls up right next to him, same car as yesterday.

It’s not all that easy to mask how bad his limp is, but he still tries while getting into Tony’s car.

‘Your leg is worse than normal,’ Tony notes right away.

‘Yes,’ Bruce says. It would be pointless to deny it.

‘Painkillers are in the glove compartment. What’s wrong with it?’

Bruce keeps his eyes on the crisp, pale world outside while Tony turns the car around and starts driving back to his apartment. ‘It broke. It healed wrong.’

He reaches for the painkillers, which are where Tony said they would be, and only takes a moment to check they’re not something completely else before dry-swallowing one. He wants a second one, but that’d make him too drowsy to study.

“It broke” is maybe a bit of an understatement. His leg has broken five separate times, but Tony doesn’t need to know that.

‘And cold makes it worse?’

‘Yep.’

Tony fishes his phone out of his pocket. It’s the first time Bruce has seen Tony use his phone while driving, but maybe he just doesn’t do it often. He puts it away quickly, though. The next turn Tony takes, takes him away from his apartment.

Bruce gives him a questioning glance.

‘I have an idea,’ is all Tony says. 'You take anti-depressants, right, though?'

'Yeah.'

'So you can't use weed, right.'

'I can.'

'No, it's dangerous. It can mess with your heart real bad.'

'My psychiatrist knows I use weed sometimes, she says it's okay if I don't use too much. She says the antidepressants I have aren't supposed to react with it as much.'

'Oh.' Tony sends another text on his phone.

They drive the rest of the way in silence. It doesn’t take Bruce long to realise they’re going back to the mansion outside town.

The painkillers haven’t kicked in yet by the time they arrive and Tony rushes over to Bruce’s side to help him out of the car. Bruce lets him, but tells him to fuck off after that and limps through the lane and to the front door on his own.

His leg still hurts, but the heating in the car helped a bit. Tony unlocks the door and starts walking through the house’s many hallways, obviously taking into account Bruce’s limited pace. They don’t take any stairs.

‘Mr. Stark? I’ve got everything ready like you asked,’ Someone says from one of the rooms they pass.

Tony turns to an open room somewhat in front of him and smiles. He doesn’t seem surprised. ‘Dex. Thank you.’ He ducks into the room to kiss the man who spoke, Dex, on the cheek. He has brown hair and a ton of freckles, he’s maybe in his thirties and he’s dusting little crystal figurines in a display case. He waves at Bruce, so Bruce waves back at him.

Tony continues down the hall, until, finally, they reach the room he was looking for.

It’s foggy inside the room, and warm, amazingly, beautifully warm. It’s a bathroom, except it’s huge, with royal blue tile and golden accents. In the middle on the room there’s a bathtub, probably three times the size of any bathtub Bruce has ever been in, filled with water and foaming soap.

He looks at Tony, not sure how to feel. This if everything he’s wanted all day, more than he’d ever hoped for.

‘That’s gonna make you feel better, right?’

Bruce nods. It’s going to hurt first, but then it’s going to feel amazing.

‘Do you need help undressing?’

Bruce’s heart sinks a little at that, remembering what’s really going on.

‘I’m not – I don’t wanna have sex right now. That’s not – this is – I should’ve said something. I’m sorry.’

‘What?’ Tony seems genuinely confused. ‘No, no. That’s not what I meant. It’s just a bath. Nothing creepy. No sex.’

‘Oh. Good.’ Bruce starts to lift his sweater, but stills when Tony just keeps standing there.

‘Oh, sorry, I’ll turn around until you’re in the water. Or do you want me to leave?’

‘No, it’s fine.’ He waits until Tony turns and double checks that he isn’t looking before he undresses, as quickly as he can without being able to bend one leg, then painstakingly sits down and slides into the tub. He drags some foam towards him before he tells Tony that he can turn back around.

‘You okay?’, Tony asks right away, walking around the tub to sit at the edge, facing Bruce. He must have heard how strained Bruce’s voice sounded.

‘Yeah, it just hurts a little.’

‘I thought this was going to make it better.’

‘It is. It’s just like – when your hands are really cold and you hold them over a heater, that hurts at first, right?’

Tony nods.

‘It’s like that.’

‘Oh! Almost forgot!’, Tony says then, looking around the bathroom and reaching over to whatever he was looking for, almost falling over in his attempt to move as little as possible. ‘I have weed.’

He holds up the joint triumphantly, then lights it and hands it to Bruce. ‘I asked Dex to roll one. Only one though.’

Bruce takes a drag, trying to relax. The pain in his leg is slowly dissipating.

Tony lies down on his back at the edge of the bath, turning his head to look at Bruce. ‘Better?’

‘Yeah. So you never smoke weed?'

'Nope. I'm already taking the antidepressants and my heart medication. Weed would just mess it all up.'

'Why do you need heart medication?'

'My heart sort of sucks at being a heart. It's a little better now. When I was a kid they had to do a ton of surgery on me.'

'It's not dangerous?'

'Not life-threatening. Unless something goes wrong. Like if I took a ton of meds and then got high on weed. Or one time when I watched a horror movie. That didn't go very well.'

For a while, they smoke in silence. Tony gets up and digs through one of the drawers at the other side of the room until he finds a tank top and shorts, bright blue and purple, and changes into those. He’s still shiny with sweat when he takes back his position at the edge of the tub, bringing a towel to put under his head as a pillow.

‘Have you ever tried to kill yourself?’, Tony asks then.

Bruce nods. ‘You?’

‘Yeah,’ Tony says. ‘But I sort of half-assed it. I don’t think I really wanted to die.’

There’s another silence.

‘I never really did it right, either, I think. Killing myself was never really the goal. Just wanted to get away from my dad.’

Tony doesn’t say anything. He looks sad.

‘I jumped out of a window, once. I could hear him coming up the stairs and nothing bad had happened in a month and I never wanted anything bad to happen again. It was a second story window, so I just broke my hip and my wrist.’

‘’s that why your leg is messed up?’

‘I think so. But it broke in a lot of places over the years. And one of the breaks never healed right because I only went to the hospital weeks after it broke.’ His dad wouldn’t let him go anymore because it was too suspicious. It was a policeman who took him to the hospital eventually. After he was arrested for his father’s murder. He’d needed surgery and still had the cast on in court. The lawyer mentioned it a lot, in his defence of Bruce.

‘So you don’t want to die?’

Bruce isn’t sure he knows the answer to that question. ‘Sometimes I don’t want to exist, or just sleep for a really long time. But I don’t think I ever want to die.’

‘How is that different from dying?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s different.’ Bruce frowns. ‘Do you want to die?’

Tony shrugs. ‘Only sometimes. But not anymore with the antidepressants.’

They’re quiet again.

‘I wanna go to space,’ Bruce says then.

‘I know, right? I wanna see all that shit like in Interstellar.’

'Yeah. But no time-travel.’

‘What if you had to travel through time, though? Where’d you go?’

‘I’d want to see what everything looked like before it evolved into everything we know now. Big ass dogs. Small ass horses. I’d probably die in a day, though.’ Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Nature seems like a nice place to die.

‘I wanna know how they built the pyramids in Egypt. And I’d wanna go to the future. Not near future, I think that’s not going to be the best, but like a couple centuries from now. Maybe a thousand years.’

They’re quiet again for a while.

‘What if we go to Europe in the Middle Ages and teach them basic hygiene? We’d be curing the Plague, right? They’d make us kings or something.’

‘I don’t know. So many extra Europeans would definitely fuck with history. I’d love to take a bath in Versailles, though. Not that I’m complaining.’

‘Do you want me to wash your hair?’

‘Later.’

Bruce smokes some more. When the joint is finished, they just stare at the ceiling.

‘Is your leg good?’

Bruce nods. His leg feels almost like the other one does. He can’t bend it all the way still, but he’s been trying during their conversation.

They spend a while in comfortable silence. Bruce doesn’t really know how much time passes, but the water isn’t going cold, so it can’t be that long.

Tony is talks about Pepper and Rhodey who are both his best friends and both live in DC now and both hate each other's guts. He talks about how it sucks that they don't get along and how Rhodey had this really annoying girlfriend once named Carol and now he has a really annoying crush on Natasha. Pepper hasn't dated anyone since she broke up with Tony years ago, which Tony seems to think is much better. While talking, he changes his position so that his head is closer to Bruce's.

‘Do you have crackers?’, Bruce asks. ‘Or Tuc. Or those ring-shaped chips?’

Tony gets up and comes back with a bag of some kind of crackers. Bruce uses the towel that Tony was using as a pillow dry his hands and digs in on the crackers.

‘Can I wash your hair?’, Tony asks around a mouthful of crackers.

Bruce nods.

Tony is surprisingly careful. He guides Bruce’s head under water, takes his time massaging in the soap, thoroughly rinses it out and insists on conditioner, even when Bruce tells him he never uses that normally. When he’s rinsed out the conditioner, too, he presses a kiss to Bruce’s shoulder, which is peeking out of the water enough for a small, rectangular scar to be visible to Tony. Bruce sinks farther into the water, his body out of reach of Tony’s lips. Tony kisses his wet hair instead.

‘You’re so gay,’ Bruce mutters.

‘That’s why you love me, though.’

Bruce splashes water into Tony’s face. ‘Turn around, I’m getting out.’

Tony does without questioning it, scooting away from the tub and turning his back to Bruce, the pack of crackers in his lap. Bruce checks that there aren’t any mirrors in Tony’s line of sight before getting out of the bathtub.

He’s quick in towelling himself dry and pulls his awful purple and green combo back on. ‘You can turn around,’ he says while opening the door to let some fresh air in.

Tony gets up and comes over to Bruce with the kind of face he usually makes before he’s going to kiss Bruce. He doesn’t though, just reaches up to push Bruce’s wet hair around until it’s looking less shapeless.

‘Nap?’, Tony asks.

Bruce nods and lets Tony pull him towards one of the downstairs bedrooms.

The bedroom they end up in has two king-sized beds. Either every room is heated, or Tony planned on coming here from the bathroom and had Dex turn on the heating. Either way, the room is pleasantly warm when they come in. There’s extra blankets on each bed.

Bruce claims the bed by the window while Tony pulls the curtains closed.

‘I want a hug,’ Tony says.

‘A hug?’

‘From you.’

Bruce walks over to him. Hugs are weird. Hugs are two people pushing themselves against each other to feel better. It doesn’t make sense. But Bruce hugs Tony.

They each get comfortable in their own bed. There’s six blankets each and Bruce uses all of his, figuring he can throw one off once it gets too warm. He doesn’t think he’s felt this comfortable in a while. His leg doesn’t hurt and his skin fits right and he’s not having any bad thoughts.


	15. Shovel Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of those chapters that I've been trying to fix for ages, but I somehow can't get the words right. I'm not happy with it at all, but I'm just going to post it, since I don't think I'm going be able to improve this. I've been trying to be less critical of myself, so I'm just going to post this and focus on the chapters that I do like. I hope you guys don't mind and I'll try to get up a better chapter soon!

They spend the rest of the day napping. Sometimes when he wakes up, Tony is on his phone. Sometimes they sit up enough to watch cartoons on the flat screen at one side of the room (Tony even has a remote with which he can tilt the screen so it’s easiest for both of them to see).

Bruce takes a moment every now and then to do some of the leg exercises the physiotherapist used to do with him. He catches Tony staring more than once.

At one point, Tony says, ‘Steve is coming over.’

Bruce drifts off again, but when he wakes up, Tony tells him Steve is almost at the gate.

Bruce sits up and rubs his eyes. He doesn’t think the weed is entirely out of his system yet, but knowing him, that’s going to be better for his social interactions rather than worse.

‘Coffee?’, Tony asks. He’s already out of bed, rummaging through a drawer at his end of the room. He throws something at Bruce which Bruce doesn’t actually manage to catch.

He picks it up from where it landed behind him on the bed. It’s a pair of wool socks, bright blue with orange dots. ‘Thanks,’ he says while sitting down to pull them on.

Tony has his own pair (pink and red) and grabs one of his blankets, putting it around his shoulders. They head out to the main part of the house like that.

They’re sitting in the living room with coffee by the time Dex lets Steve in. They’re watching something called Steven Universe. Bruce has never heard of it, but Tony seemingly loves it and sings along with the theme song. He’s pressed up against Bruce’s side, head resting on his shoulder and Bruce doesn’t even mind.

When Steve sees them sitting there like that, he smiles. On anyone else’s face that smile would look goofy and a little weird, but on Steve’s face it looks just right.

He sits down next to Tony, who pats his knee in greeting. ‘You guys doing okay?’

‘Super okay,’ Tony says. Bruce finds himself nodding. Today is a nice day.

‘Where’s your glasses?’, Steve asks once the current episode is over. Bruce has his glasses on his face, so he’s pretty sure Steve is talking to Tony.

‘I have contacts in.’

‘No you don’t.’

‘I do. You wanna poke in my eye to check? Because usually I prefer poking in other places.’ It’s a stupid come back, but Tony somehow makes it sound ridiculously flirty.

Steve scoffs. ‘It’s your headache. Not my problem.’

They watch two more episodes before Tony finally gets up, disappears out of the room and comes back with glasses on his face.

They’re small and rectangular, with thin metal frames. Weirdly, they make Tony look younger.

Tony is scowling. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he says petulantly to Bruce, who only then realises he had been staring.

It does make Bruce feel a little shitty. He didn’t even know Tony wears contacts. Tony must have taken his contacts out to nap and then must have been too uncomfortable around Bruce to wear his glasses.

Bruce stands, making both Steve and Tony look at him. ‘I’m gonna head out,’ he says, without really looking at either of them. Steve’s hand is resting right next to Tony’s thigh. Bruce tries not to imagine how he’ll put it on Tony’s leg once Bruce leaves. He knows there’s nothing between Steve and Tony, but it just seems to make sense. The way they are around each other, Bruce can’t imagine it has never led to anything else.

‘No, stay,’ Tony says right away.

‘I have homework. A lot of it.’

‘I’ll drive you, then.’

‘I’ll drive,’ Steve says. ‘I have to head back into town anyway. I was going to bring leftovers from the chili I made. I forgot them.’

‘Okay, but get back soon.’ He gives Steve a hug, then comes to stand in front of Bruce without doing anything, as if he’s waiting for Bruce to take initiative.

‘Do you have enough blankets at your place?’, Tony asks when Bruce doesn’t move. ‘I’ll get you blankets.’

‘It’s fine,’ Bruce lies. ‘I have plenty.’

‘You can never have enough blankets,’ Tony yells back from where he’s already running down the hallway to get the blankets.

He comes back with four ridiculously soft, fluffy blankets that he deposits into Bruce’s arms. Bruce wants to protest, but he can’t afford to get sick from the cold in his apartment. There’s no way he can pay for medicine right now. ‘Thank you,’ he says instead.

Tony gives him a quick peck on the cheek. ‘I’m going to nap some more. Be back in thirty, okay?’

‘Will do,’ Steve says. Bruce follows him out of the mansion and to his car, which is considerably crappier than Tony’s.

They’re both quiet while they get into the car and Steve drives away. Bruce only breaks the silence to tell Steve he lives close by the dorms.

‘Look,’ Steve says then. ‘I have a question that’s really shitty and offensive, but also really important.’

‘Okay,’ Bruce says, immediately thinking about a hundred different subjects he’d consider ‘shitty’.

‘Have you ever been abusive?’

‘What?’ He can feel his face go hot. That was one subject he hadn’t thought of.

‘Like, would you ever hurt someone who trusts you. Physically.’ Steve is steadily keeping his eyes on the road. He looks uncomfortable.

Bruce is quiet for a moment. He isn’t angry. He isn’t even offended. There’s only one emotion that rushes through his body at that question: shame. He’s violent and bad and he can’t be trusted, especially not with good things. Especially not with Tony.

‘It’s just, Tony has a type and that type is abusive assholes and you don’t seem like an abusive asshole, but I still need to make sure Tony’s in good hands, right? He won’t do it. He wouldn’t care if you turned out to be abusive. So I have to care.’

‘I’m not. Abusive. I don’t think I’d ever be.’ He feels a little nauseous. Tony has asked him before to hurt him. Only yesterday he tried to get Bruce to punish him. Worse, he _expected_ Bruce to punish him. The first time they’d had sex, Tony had hoped for him to be angry. Maybe Tony wanted Bruce to stick around so bad because he was hoping Bruce would hurt him.

‘That’s good. That’s – he deserves someone who doesn’t hurt him. I’m sorry for asking,’ Steve says. He’s got a least a foot on Bruce in length and he’s got shoulders wider than all those hot actors that are paid for having wide shoulders, but right now, hunched over in the car with a frown on his face, Steve looks small.

‘No, it’s good that someone looks out for him,’ Bruce says. ‘But how – if he’s been in an abusive relationship, how is he so – normal?’ Bruce hasn’t been around his dad for years and it’s still so clear from his behaviour that he’s not okay. Tony, although he definitely doesn’t have it easy, doesn’t seem like he’s been through anything like that.

Steve looks away from the road long enough to raise an eyebrow at Bruce, almost smiling. ‘He seem normal to you?’

‘He’s not – scared or overly submissive or careful.’

‘He was, a little bit, after he broke up with – there were two guys who treated him like this – but when he broke up with the worst one. I had known him for a while by then and the relationship changed him a lot. I don’t think he’s necessarily gotten a lot better since, but he’s good at hiding it, now. He knows how he’s expected to react to things, so that’s how he reacts. But he still expects people to hurt him, thinks he deserves it. So just – protect him, okay?’

Bruce nods.

‘I’m glad he has you,’ Steve says.

Bruce has no idea what to say to that. It feels like such a responsibility, being wanted by someone. Like he has a knife pointed right at Tony’s belly and the wrong movement could gut him.

‘He’s not being as ass to you, right?’, Steve asks then.

‘Sometimes, but it’s not too bad.’

Then Steve’s expression turns more mischievous. ‘We have a bet. Maybe you should be warned about that. It’s a little inappropriate.’

‘A bet.’

‘On how many times you and Tony had fucked when he introduced you. We bet on everything, sort of.’

‘What did you bet?’

‘Once. But I’m cheating a little bit. Tony came over and got drunk and talked about you, so I had a little more to go on than everyone else. Are you coming to Natasha’s birthday party? We’re still planning it, but it’s the 28th, so Saturday next week.’

Bruce nods. If Tony goes, he’ll probably drag Bruce along anyway. ‘Okay, I’ll be there.’

‘Where gonna do a surprise party at her sorority. Nat sort of pretends that she doesn’t care about her birthday, but she’s gonna love it.’

‘She’s in a sorority?’

‘Yeah. She doesn’t seem like the type, right? But it’s not the kind of thing you imagine when you think of a sorority. You’ll see at the party.’

The car slows down. Bruce grabs all of the blankets with one arm and slings his backpack over his shoulder with the other. ‘Thanks for the ride,’ he manages as he tries to get out without looking too much like a loser.

Steve smiles at him and he really does look like a ray of sunshine. ‘Any time,’ he says.

Bruce gets back to his apartment and stays buried under the blankets while he studies for the rest of the day. The blankets still smell of Tony.


	16. Dance Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another update! Yay!
> 
> When I wrote this, I had just watched P!nk's 2017 VMA performance and I got a little sentimental, so there's lots of 2000's pop music in here. I seriously love P!nk so much. Hope you guys enjoy!

Bruce stays at his foster parents’ house over the weekend. Tony keeps texting him about all kinds of random things that happen to him and Bruce tries his best to answer every text. His foster mom teases him when she catches him looking at his phone so much, but doesn’t press.

He feels pretty relaxed when he gets back, until he notices that his foster dad slipped a hundred bucks into his backpack at some point. It annoys him to no end. He told them he got a job, that he was doing okay. His foster mom commented that he was too skinny, but that was something she’d been saying even when she was still the one feeding him every day.

Tony has been texting him since Friday evening that he should come over after having visited his foster parents, so Sunday afternoon, Bruce gets off the bus a stop early and walks the rest of the way to Tony’s apartment.

‘I’m a little buzzed,’ is the first thing Tony says when he comes downstairs to let Bruce in. ‘Like, slightly buzzed.’

He throws his arms around Bruce and Bruce lets him, but doesn’t hug back. 

‘Come upstairs!’, Tony says as he starts running up the stairs to his apartment. ‘You need to catch up.’

He’s already pouring Bruce a glass of rum when Bruce makes it up the stairs. He puts lemon, sugar and mint in it, but no soda.

‘That’s not how mojitos work,’ Bruce says.

Tony shrugs exaggeratedly. ‘Go tell the cocktail police,’ he huffs.

‘Terrible comeback,’ Bruce notes. He can’t help smiling. For once, Tony’s presence is actually helping to improve his mood.

Tony comes to stand in front of him and hands him the glass of flavoured rum. ‘I was thinking we could have a dance party,’ he says. ‘What music do you like?’

‘For a dance party?’

Tony nods.

Bruce takes a sip of his rum as he pretends to think about his answer. He’s only heard Tony listen to classic rock so far. He can think of a few artists he listens to that Tony may not like. ‘Katy Perry.’

Tony grins at him disbelievingly, as if waiting for Bruce to say he’s joking.

‘Katy Perry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bruce Banner likes Katy Perry?’

‘Among others.’

‘What song do you like best?’

Bruce takes another sip of rum. ‘Last Friday Night is pretty good. I liked Teenage Dream but that’s not so much for a dance party.’

‘You’re joking, right? This is way too good to be true. What other stuff do you like?’

‘P!nk. Black Eyed Peas. The classics, Tony. Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars.’

Tony is grinning ear to ear. ‘This can’t be real. You are such a beautiful human. You’re just saying this to make me feel good.’

There’s not a lot of light in Tony’s apartment. Some daylight sines through the closed curtain, but not a single lamp in on. Bruce hopes it’s dark enough that Tony can’t see him blush. ‘Just put on a song, Tony.’

It’s doesn’t take much rum for Bruce to start to feel a little buzzed. He sets the glass down on the coffee table while Tony starts to fiddle with his laptop, which is positioned on the kitchen counter.

Bruce comes to stand in the kitchen with him. ‘Why a dance party?’

‘Because I saw you dance at that party, the one after Jarvis just died. And you were really fucking pretty. Also’ -Tony turns on a song, grinning- ‘Because I want to see you smile.

And Bruce does smile, ridiculously so, when he hears the tell-tale ‘Na na na na na na na’ of P!nk’s greatest hit.

They start dancing, wildly. Bruce is sure they look silly, but he doesn’t mind. He drinks more rum. Tony sneaks some sips from his glass, too, pours more when it’s empty.

Bruce has never used music as a way to dwell on sadness or anger. He doesn’t listen to music all that much, especially not now that he’s older, but it has always been a means of escape to him. A way to pretend he was somewhere else, someone else. No bruises, no fear, no scars. It’s always been a place where he felt safe, but also a place surreal enough that he’d never long for it. He’d never really known where to start when listening to music, so he just listened to whatever was popular at the time.

Tony grabs his hands and they spin around. There’s song after song of cheerfulness, of strength. Tony finds stuff that Bruce didn’t even mention, Ke$ha and Florida and Usher. Tony sings along with every single song and Bruce smiles until his cheeks hurt.

The music keeps playing when they finally drop down on the couch to catch their breath.

‘Would you let Beyoncé touch you?’, Tony asks when the next song that comes on is Halo.

‘She’s sort of out of my league. And she’s married and stuff, but, yeah, maybe. Depends on the day.’

‘On the day?’

‘If I’m, like, okay with touch or not.’

‘Oh.’ Tony thinks about that for a bit. ‘So you’d only let her touch you as much as you let me?’

Bruce shakes his head. ‘I trust you more.’ He picks up their glass for another couple sips, then hands it over to Tony, who drinks, too.

‘What are you okay with today?’

‘Like, touch-wise?’

Tony nods.

Bruce takes a moment to think about it. ‘I didn’t mind the touches while dancing. I don’t mind this,’ he gestures at the place where their legs press together. ‘I would mind sex, or just sexual touches.’

‘Would you mind cuddling?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Bruce says. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Can I try?’

Bruce nods. Tony sets the glass back on the coffee table and puts his arms around Bruce. Bruce snakes one arm around Tony’s waist, pulling him closer. Mostly it’s just the alcohol that’s making him able to stand the touch, but it doesn’t matter. He buries in face in Tony’s neck as Tony drags his hands through Bruce’s hair. Tony is pretty much in his lap, draped over Bruce and going boneless as Bruce strokes his back.

Tony fumbles with his phone to turn off the music, then drops it next to them on the couch. It’s such a nice, quiet moment.

‘I haven’t slept a lot,’ Tony whispers, close to Bruce’s ear. ‘I had a two hour nap – yesterday, somewhere.’

Bruce never sleeps well at his foster parents’ house. He’s had maybe three hours of sleep in the last two days combined. It catches up with him now that he’s finally sitting still. The couch is too comfortable, Tony too warm, too safe.

‘Just a short nap,’ Bruce mumbles back. ‘Not too long.’

Tony is already drifting off.

Bruce doesn’t know what time it is when he wakes up again, but it’s dark outside. Tony is shifting on top off him. Every place they were touching is sweaty, too warm in a pleasant way. When Tony sits up and their chests are no longer touching, the sweat cools, leaving Bruce shivering.

The sound that woke him up stops and Tony puts his phone to his ear. ‘Clint? Okay, yeah, I’ll be right down.’ His voice is soft and gentle.

‘Clint is sleeping over,’ he tells Bruce when he ends the call. ‘It’s going to be obvious that he isn’t doing okay, but just don’t ask, all right? He really hates it when people try to talk about his problems.’

Bruce nods. Tony runs downstairs to open the door for Clint and it’s a couple of minutes at least before they come upstairs again.

‘Hi,’ Clint says to Bruce. He has a bruise over his left cheekbone and he looks dead on his feet, but he still manages a smile. He drops his backpack by the door and kicks off his shoes. ‘I’m not interrupting quality time, am I?’

Bruce shakes his head.

‘Mario Kart?’, Tony asks from behind Clint.

Clint nods.

Clint settles next to Bruce on the couch while Tony turns on the TV and gets the controls. 

Tony plops down in between them.

‘I really need to teach you how to play another game,’ Clint mumbles. His voice is much softer now than it was at McDonald’s. It almost drops out a couple of times, as if he’s been shouting a lot. ‘We’re gonna get tired of this.’

‘Do you know Call of Duty, Bruce? Or what was the one you and Thor always play?’

‘Fallout,’ Clint says. ‘Which is something completely different.’

‘Yeah, I’ve played Fallout,’ Bruce says to Clint. ‘It’s been a while, though. I’ve only ever played the original one, not all the new stuff.’ Blonsky and him played video games a lot, to pass the time.

‘See? I don’t have to learn any weird video games. Bruce can play all of them for me.’

It takes a couple rounds for Bruce to get into the game, but eventually he gets close to beating Clint. He doesn’t seem used to being challenged like this, but grins as he tries to run Bruce off the Rainbow Road.

Clint wins, Bruce is a close second. Tony is fifth and spends most of the next couple rounds yelling encouragements at Bruce while he tries to elbow Clint in the gut. Bruce isn’t very competitive, but Tony is plenty competitive for the both of them, and he’s the one who rubs it in Clint’s face when Bruce finally beats him.

Clint is grinning, though.

‘Have you guys eaten?’, he asks instead of starting a new race. ‘I haven’t eaten.’

‘Me neither,’ Tony says. He looks at Bruce questioningly.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Bruce says. He always eats too much when he visits his aunt and uncle. He usually makes up for it by eating less the next couple of days.

Tony frowns, but doesn’t comment on it. ‘Thai?’, he asks Clint.

Clint nearly pouts. ‘Pizza?’

‘You have an addiction,’ Tony mumbles, but he goes to grab his laptop and orders from Clint’s favourite pizza restaurant online, anyway.

‘You need to get something, too,’ Tony tells Bruce.

Bruce shakes his head. ‘I’m not hungry,’ he repeats.

‘You like peperoni? I’ll get you the peperoni.’

‘I don’t want to eat, okay?’

‘You’re body needs food anyway.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

Tony puts his head on Bruce’s shoulder. ‘I’m gonna get you the peperoni.’ He doesn’t sound like he’s telling, Bruce, but like he’s pleading.

‘You weren’t even planning on eating anything yourself.’

‘Yeah, and that was a stupid idea. Just let me do this?’

Bruce sighs, but reaches up for a moment to curl his fingers in the hair at the back of Tony’s head. Tony puckers his lips and makes a kissing sound, but doesn’t touch Bruce’s skin. It sort of makes Bruce smile. He’s way too drunk, still.

Tony orders the peperoni, too, and Clint starts another round as they wait for the order to arrive.

Tony doesn’t join, telling them he has to clean up the kitchen. ‘The kitchen is already clean,’ Clint tells him, but Tony ignores him and starts wiping down the counters.

Bruce manages to win from Clint again, then loses twice. They’re still playing the fourth round when the food arrives, but Tony goes down to get it. While Clint and Bruce were playing, he cleaned every flat surface in the kitchen, including the floor, rearranged everything inside the cupboards and the fridge and set the table.

Tony insists that they eat the pizza off actual plates, instead of eating it out of the boxes, but easily concedes that they can eat in front of the TV instead of at the kitchen table. Bruce picks at his peperoni pizza half-heartedly. Tony steals a slice from Bruce instead of eating his own. 

Clint eyes them wearily when Tony leans against Bruce, but talks about Natasha’s birthday party once Tony starts asking about it. He still seems off. He’s less enthusiastic, doesn’t laugh at his own jokes, keeps checking his phone with a sad frown.

‘Hey!’, Clint exclaims when Tony grabs his phone and turns it off.

‘We’re going to bed,’ he says. ‘You have to avoid blue light for an hour before trying to sleep.’

Bruce gets ready in the bathroom while Tony and Clint get ready in the bedroom. He can hear them talking through the door. It sounds cheerful and light-hearted. When he comes back into the bedroom, Tony is holding onto Clint’s shoulder and they seem to be debating who has had the most embarrassing moment, both grinning.

Clint gets into the bed first, toying with his hearing aids, but not taking them off, yet.

‘You still up for cuddling?’, Tony asks, coming to stand closer to Bruce.

He takes a moment to think about it, then shakes his head.

He lies down on the opposite side of the bed. Tony goes to lie in the middle. Clint immediately wriggles into his space, cuddling up to Tony’s back. Tony hums happily, pushing back against Clint. Bruce can tell that they do this a lot. 

‘Good night,’ Bruce mumbles, turning off the light. Tony and Clint return the sentiment. Only then does Clint take out his hearing aids.

In the dark, Tony reaches out, grabbing Bruce’s hand and pulling it towards his chest. Bruce shuffles a little bit closer, dragging his hand to Tony’s belly to avoid bumping into Clint’s hands. 

Tony puts his hand over Bruce’s as Bruce keeps caressing his skin. It’s sort of nice, that Clint is there, too. That’s his showing Tony love, too. It feels more complete like this.


	17. Clint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year everyone!

When Bruce wakes up, it’s still dark. Tony is sleeping soundly in front of him, but Clint isn’t there. Around the edges of the bathroom door, light shines through.

Bruce figures maybe Clint just needed to pee, but when fifteen minutes pass and he still hasn’t come out, he drops that theory. He figures he can just turn over, ignore the light and go back to sleep. It isn’t any of his business if Clint wants to be in the bathroom the whole night. But Clint is also Tony’s friend, and obviously something is wrong.

So Bruce gets up and quietly knocks on the door.

‘Clint? Are you okay?’

There’s a pause, then a muted ‘yeah’.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Yeah.’

Bruce slowly opens the door and closes it again behind him, so as not to disturb Tony.

Clint is sitting on the floor next to the toilet, leaning against the wall, knees pulled up.

Bruce sits down where he’s standing and leans his back against the door. 

‘I felt nauseous,’ Clint tells him.

Bruce just nods. ‘Nightmare?’

‘Yeah. I don’t even remember it.’

‘How long have you been sitting here?’

‘No idea.’

They’re silent for a while. ‘Showers usually help for me. Hot compresses. Tea. Something that makes me feel warm again.’

Clint shakes his head. ‘I don’t feel cold. I don’t feel anything.’

‘Doesn’t it help to hold Tony?’

Clint shrugs. ‘Not when I woke up. I thought I was going to puke.’

‘You think it’d help to go back to bed?’

There’s a glass with toothbrushes in it by the sink. Bruce gets up, cleans it out with a towel, fills it with water and hands it to Clint, who gets up and drinks from it.

He nods.

‘Why don’t you cuddle with Tony?’, he asks Bruce.

Bruce shrugs. ‘I don’t always like that kind of proximity.’

‘Would you like it now?’

‘I don’t know.’

Clint grabs his hand, pulls him out of the bathroom, turning off the light behind them. Tony is still sleeping soundly. Clint lies down beside him, pulling Bruce to lie down on Tony’s other side. Tony’s back is turned towards Bruce this time. Clint guides Bruce’s hands, to Tony’s hair and his chest, tangles one of his own hands in Tony’s hair, too, the other on his hip. He sighs contentedly, putting his head against Tony’s shoulder.

To Bruce’s surprise, he manages to fall asleep like that, sharing body heat with Tony. 

He wakes up on his stomach, but his side is still pressed against, Tony, his right arm resting against Tony’s spine and the back of Tony’s neck, his fingers in Tony’s hair.

He stays like that until Tony wakes up. He stares at his hair. He doesn’t know if he’s in love with Tony. He thinks Tony is beautiful. He wants him to be happy and safe. He wants to be the one who makes Tony happy and safe. It’s not like how he felt about Betty, but that might just be because he’s different now. 

Tony tilts his head into Bruce’s touch, letting him know he’s awake. Bruce clenches and unclenches his fingers in Tony’s hair in answer, massaging Tony’s scalp.

He sits up a little, rubbing his eyes, and realises Clint isn’t cuddled up to Tony’s other side anymore. He’s lying at the edge of the bed, his back to them. Tony turns around to face him.

‘We should make a code,’ Tony says.

‘A code?’ He keeps his voice quiet, mindful of Clint still sleeping. It takes a moment for him to realise why Tony isn’t doing the same. Clint doesn’t have his hearing aids in. Their talking can’t bother him because he can barely hear it.

‘For how you feel about touch. So that it’s easy for you to let me know.’

‘Like what?’

‘With numbers or something. One is no touch, two is touch is sort of okay, three is I want touch?’ Tony shakes his head. ‘More elaborate maybe. One: no touch. Two: only really casual touches. Three: like, more like, friendship touches. Four: hugs and, like, frequent touches. And then five is that you really want to be touched?’

Bruce nods. It’s sort of surprising that Tony managed to divide different gradations of touch so easily. Bruce never would have managed.

‘Something separate for sex,’ Bruce mumbles. ‘Sometimes I hate being touched, but I don’t mind sex. Or I’m okay with touch but not with sex.’

Tony nods. ‘Would positive, neutral, negative work? Where positive is you wanting sex, negative is you not wanting sex and neutral is you don’t really mind if I touch your ass or you thigh or something but you just don’t want it to turn into anything more intense? Does that make sense?’

‘Yeah. I think that would work.’

‘We can change it if it doesn’t, right?’

Bruce nods.

‘Where are you at right now?’

‘Like… Three – three neutral, maybe?’

‘How’s that for communication, huh?’, Tony grins.

Bruce smiles back at him. It’s this really sappy moment, where they just stare into each other’s eyes and smile, but Bruce doesn’t mind too much.

Eventually, Tony prods Bruce until he makes breakfast pancakes, which is something Tony insists he can’t do.

Clint drifts into the kitchen as Bruce is finishing up. Tony won’t let him clean anything, does that himself once Bruce and Clint are seated at the table with a stack of pancakes between them.

Bruce puts one on his plate and picks at it while Clint chews through four. Tony joins them eventually and finishes two.

Clint has an ability Bruce never understood but always envied. He can hold a conversation with so much ease, always knows a way to continue even when Bruce doesn’t think there’s anything left to say. Not in an annoying way, in a comfortable way, like a radio playing in another room, someone quietly humming along.

Clint stays for the rest of the week. Bruce goes home to study for half a day, but Tony and Clint (probably because Tony made him) are very insistent on him coming back as soon as possible. They even promise to spend at least three hours every day studying to make Bruce stay.

He does stay. The code Tony and him came up with really works. Clint doesn’t ask about it, even when they start using it a couple of times a day. He doesn’t seem like a touchy person in general. Tony touches him often and Clint is pretty much an octopus when he’s trying to fall asleep, but during waking hours, he keeps his hands to himself.

On Thursday, the third day that Clint is there, a girl named Kate comes over. She seems to know Tony pretty well and is immediately comfortable around Bruce.

She’s funny, and brings more video games. She loves pizza as much as Clint does, but manages, with a lot of poking and prodding, to get Clint to work out with her. Then Bruce and her do some yoga. Bruce doesn’t do it a lot, and due to some of his lasting injuries, he’ll never be very flexible, but Kate catches on easily and leaves out some exercises that are hard for him to pull off.

She sleeps with them in the bed as well, curled around Clint’s back like a backpack.


	18. Headache

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a short discussion of an emotionally abusive relationship in this chapter as well as a short mention of childhood abuse and neglect.  
> At the very end of the chapter, there's a short, non-graphic sex-scene that involves someone who is only 16, it's completely consensual, but it's still underage, if you want to skip it, just stop reading when Kate enters the apartment at the end of the chapter.  
> If you need any more information, hit me up on tumblr (hungryface) xo

Friday night, Clint and Kate leave. Kate is meeting up with friends. Clint has class until late and is getting dinner with someone after, though he’s going to sleep over at Tony’s. He doesn’t say who he’s getting dinner with, but Tony tells Bruce it’s a man named Coulson once Clint has left. Coulson is almost forty and refuses to have sex with Clint, but Clint has a huge crush on him anyway. It’s apparently something that has been going on since Clint’s senior year of high school (or at least, the second time he had to do his senior year).

Coulson must be just as in love as Clint is, or he would have stopped seeing him by now.

Tony explains all this over dinner, which consist of Haagen Dasz ice cream and red wine. Both things separately would give Bruce a headache. Combining them is a horrible idea, but maybe that’s sort of the point.

Tony’s has his hand pressed against his own forehead, wincing in pain, but uses his other hand to put another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.

‘What are we going to do after dinner?’, Tony asks.

‘I don’t know. I should head back to my apartment. I could use a nap.’

‘You can nap here.’

‘I wanna nap on my own.’

‘You’re so weird. You’re like the opposite of me. Of everyone I know, pretty much.’

Bruce doesn’t need to be told that he isn’t normal, he already knows that. ‘Why?’

‘You hate touch.’

‘I don’t hate touch.’

‘Okay, yeah, it depends on the day. But most days you hate touch, right. The highest you’ve been so far is a three. Most people are at like, four by default.’

Bruce sighs. There’s not much for him to say about that. ‘How other people feel about touch doesn’t really change anything for me.’

‘Would you be jealous if I get lots of touch from other people?’

Bruce sighs and gets up to find his shoes. He knows when he’s being manipulated. ‘I’m gonna head out.’

Tony frowns, getting up as well. There’s ice cream stuck in the corner of his mouth, but Bruce doesn’t point it out and Tony doesn’t wipe it away. Tony frowns. ‘But I didn’t do anything.’

‘What?’

‘I know I – I was too pushy or something, but I can stop, okay?’

Bruce doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what to say. He has no idea what’s going on.

‘You can’t leave because of something that small. That’s not fair.’

‘I’m leaving because I’m tired.’

Tony paces. ‘Then go! I don’t fucking want you here anyway!’ He seems distressed almost. His face is that blotchy red colour it gets when Tony is angry.

Bruce sighs. He reaches out and tugs at Tony’s wrist until Tony sits down at the table again. Bruce sits, too. ‘We keep having the same conversations.’

‘You can fucking leave, okay? Steve told me he told you about Tiberius. I know you’re just being civil now because you pity me.’

‘Is Tiberius the guy who hurt you?’

Tony opens his mouth to say something, but thinks better of it and just nods.

‘And he used to punish you when you did something he didn’t like?’

Tony nods again.

‘And sometimes he punished you by leaving you alone?’

Tony shrugs. ‘It wasn’t his job to be with me all the time. He still had a life, you know. You don’t have to feel guilty about leaving. I’ll be fine.’

‘But you think I’m leaving because I’m mad at you for something? And that leaving is a punishment?’

Tony just shrugs again, not making eye contact. He seems almost ashamed, now.

‘And when I left, after we had sex, you thought that was a punishment, too?’

Tony looks away.

Bruce leans back in his chair, suddenly feeling horrible. He’s so selfish. It didn’t even occur to him that Tony could be hurt by Bruce doing whatever he wanted to do at the time.

‘You know I didn’t mean it like that, right?’

‘Just don’t worry about it, okay? It was a misunderstanding.’

‘So if I leave now that’s fine?’

‘Yeah. I’m not your keeper.’

Bruce doesn’t get up. He feels sort of bad about putting his own wants first without even thinking about how it could affect Tony.

‘I’ll stay if we sleep on the couches,’ he says eventually. Sharing a bed with someone three nights in a row has been intense for Bruce. Just the thought of doing it again repulses him right now.

‘This is probably the weirdest friendship I’ve ever had. Except maybe – no, Steve at least got close to me before we fucked.’

‘You fucked Steve?’ He’s sort of shocked. He’d assumed that if Tony said there wasn’t anything between them, that’d include past relationships.

Tony studies Bruce’s face for a moment, then grins. ‘You’re jealous.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Yes you are. Whenever you’re like hurt or embarrassed or whatever, your face stops moving. Clint pointed it out. See.’ He traces his fingers over Bruce’s cheek. ‘All you do is blink.’

Bruce honestly doesn’t know what his face looks like when he’s trying to hide his emotions. He’s too focused on the emotions themselves to even think of his features. ‘Who even topped?’, he mumbles, hoping Tony will stop talking about his face.

‘Steve. I’d never top.’

‘When was this?’

‘When James was overseas. They broke up for a little. It was this whole dramatic thing. James thought Steve’d feel like shit if James died overseas, so he broke up with Steve because he thought that wouldn’t hurt or something? And then Steve felt like shit anyway and then he got angry, because Steve deals with everything by getting righteously angry and doing something reckless. And then he got drunk and came over to my apartment and, well. I’d never really hidden the fact that I was into Steve. This was after Obie, but before Tiberius. So I was lonely and maybe sort of desperate and Steve just went with it. I knew it was just a one-time thing, though. They’ve broken up a couple of times. Never lasted for over two weeks.’

‘Isn’t that sort of shitty of him, though. He basically used you.’ Bruce remembers when Tony brought this up to Steve, back at McDonald’s.

Tony shrugs. ‘Not like I gave a fuck. I knew he was using me. I was taking advantage of him, too.’

‘Was it good?’

Tony shrugs. ‘At the time it didn’t really matter. The person I wanted to be fucked by most in the entire world was fucking me. I didn’t really care about anything else. Steve is probably the kinkiest person I know. I’ve seen his browser history, once. It has things even I haven’t heard of. Then the one time he has sex with me, it’s the plainest vanilla sex ever had in the world. That’s okay, though. Otherwise I would have come, like, right away. Still like you better, though. You are, like, psychic when it comes to sex. You’re perfect.’

Bruce tries to ignore that last part. ‘Are you still in love with him?’ He’s asked this before, he’s not entirely convinced yet. Tony and Steve are so close to each other, have an intimacy Bruce won’t ever be capable of. Now that he knows they’ve had sex he’s even more concerned. There’s no way he’ll ever be able to compete with Steve.

Tony looks away, which is a bad sign. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever was. I just – wanted him to be into me because, I mean, it’s Steve. He’s like an angel. If he could be into me that would mean Obie was wrong.’

‘What did Obie say?’

Tony shakes his head. ‘Doesn’t matter. Point is, I only got eyes for you. In a non-clingy, not-moving-things-too-fast kind of way. No need to worry about Steve.’

‘Yeah?’ Bruce is strangely nervous about all this. Tony has been inexplicably into him, but if he’s into guys like Steve, he’s going to lose interest in Bruce quickly.

‘Same way I don’t need to be worried about you and James, right.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did that even happen?’

‘Same psychiatrist. I have my appointments right after his. So one time before I go in, he asks me if I wanna fuck, I tell him yes and after my session we go to his apartment together.’

‘You’re gonna have to tell me the whole story once. Although I think my brain might short-circuit. That’s so hot.’

Bruce just nods.

‘So the clear conclusion is that I should sleep with James and you should sleep with Steve. Then we’ve gone full circle.’

‘I don’t really want to sleep with Steve, to be honest, even if he wanted to sleep with me.’

Tony is grinning. ‘Is it because you’re jealous of him?’

‘No. Do you sleep with your friends a lot?’

‘I don’t think you want to know.’

‘But you want to tell me, right?’

‘Yeah. Thor fucked me once, that was nice. Clint and I sort of fooled around and got each other off a couple of times, but there wasn’t any – like, it was just foreplay I guess, not sex. And Natasha and I almost fucked one time, but then we sobered up and realised that was a stupid idea. Pepper is my ex so obviously we’ve fucked a lot. I’ve tried to get into Rhodey’s pants, but he doesn’t want me. Has a whole lecture to go with his rejection and everything. I think that’s about all the friends I have. Except Peter but that would just be weird. He’s more like a little brother. Or a weird cousin or something.’

‘Who is Peter?’

‘He’s this, like…’ Tony scratches his forehead. ‘I convinced my dad to pay a couple of kids through college and then later I found out one of them would be going to MIT, so I figured I could help him survive college, you know. ‘Cause my dad’s definitely going to stop paying for these kids if they don’t do well. So I’m like, trying to mentor him, I guess? But he doesn’t know that. He just thinks – I don’t know what he thinks I’m doing. But we’re friends I guess. Although, never mind, he probably doesn’t like me.’

‘Is he the really smart kid that’s also doing Biology?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh, I’ve actually met him. He’s cool.’

‘But don’t tell anyone about him, okay? Clint would give me so much shit for making fun of him and Kate if he knows I’m hanging out with an even younger kid.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

Bruce finishes his wine despite already having a headache. ‘Is Thor good in bed? He looks like he’s good in bed.’

‘He is gentle as fuck. Like, stupidly gentle. Or maybe that was because of – because of.’ He pauses for a little. ‘You know, our whole group has a shit ton of bets on literally everything. They’re betting on who bottoms and who tops between the two of us. Thor bet you bottom a lot. I think it’s mostly wishful thinking.’

Bruce sort of wants to go back to what Tony was about to say, but it’s clear that Tony wants to change the subject. ‘What did the others bet?’

‘Steve and Clint bet that I always bottom. Natasha that we switch. I’m pretty sure she has that from James.’

‘Have you ever topped at all?’

‘A couple of times. It’s so boring, though. And so much work.’

‘What else do they bet on?’

‘How many times we’ve fucked, if we’re like, dating or friends with benefits or whatever. How long we’ve been doing this for. Whether or not Natasha is seeing someone, if Clint and Kate have ever done anything sexual, how long it’s going to take for Thor and Jane to properly get together, how long it’s going to take for Clint and Coulson to fuck. Most of it is about sex, really. And Steve keeps coming up with them, so we rarely bet on stuff having to do with him. Oh, we do have a bet about whether or not Steve actually got his penis pierced that time he said he would. He didn’t, though.’

‘That’s good to know.’

Tony yawns. ‘You wanna watch TV,’ he asks.

Bruce knows it’s an excuse for them to fall asleep on the same couch, but he nods anyway. He can always move to another couch once Tony is asleep. He gets up and drops down onto the couch across the room. Predictably, Tony sits down on the same couch, though he stays on the opposite side from Bruce.

‘What number are you at?’

‘Two.’

Tony turns on the TV, but looks at Bruce. ‘Is it like a depleting source? Like the more touch you get, the less you can take, and then you have to power back up before people can touch you again?’

‘It’s –‘ Bruce shrugs. ‘I never really want people to touch me, Tony... I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But that’s like – that doesn’t make any sense biologically. I know there’s a lot of things that people say don’t make sense biologically, but this is like – it messes up your health when you don’t get enough touch.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is! Have you ever wondered why we’re both so tiny? There’s like research that proves this. Kids don’t grow the same when they don’t get enough touch.’

Bruce knows he’s abnormally small for a guy, and Tony is about the same height as him, but he’d always assumed it had to do with how many times his bones had broken, how many times he’d gone to bed with an empty stomach. He’d started smoking when he was fourteen, drinking the year after that, for the first two years following his mother’s death, he’d made it a habit to sleep at the bottom of his cramped closet. He’d been through plenty of things that could have stunted his growth.

The thing is that Tony hasn’t. He may have started drinking as early as Bruce had, but he’d never been starved or physically abused. What they do have in common is lifelong neglect. Neither of them had ever been held and cuddled as much as normal children had. It would make sense if that was the cause of their stunted growth.

It makes him feel horrible. He hasn’t felt this sad in a while. Not for himself; he has accepted that he’s fucked up beyond repair a long time ago. But Tony deserves better. Tony deserves to be held and cared for and protected. He deserves to be nurtured, to get every chance he can to grow.

Bruce looks at the TV without really registering what’s playing on the screen. Tony flips through a couple of channels until he settles on a programme he likes. It takes Bruce a while to realise it’s Spongebob. He can’t focus, stuck on what Tony just told him.

Tony changes the channel after two episodes of Spongebob to a reality show that has a lot of yelling. 

Bruce quietly grabs his shoulder and guides him to lie down, head in Bruce’s lap. Tony goes along with it, pulling up his legs to make himself more comfortable. Bruce strokes Tony’s hair, then rests his hand on the side of Tony’s neck. Tony keeps his eyes on the TV, doesn’t return the touch, like he’s afraid to spook Bruce. Maybe this makes Bruce a bad person. He’s depriving Tony. He deserves so much touch and Bruce doesn’t give it to him. It’s not right.

He can feel Tony’s heartbeat, which gradually slows as he drifts off to sleep.

When Bruce wakes up, the TV is still on and the bedroom door is wide open. He can see Clint sleeping on the bed from where he’s sitting on the couch. Tony hasn’t moved, but Bruce’s hand is wrapped between his now, still pressed against his neck.

Bruce uses his free hand to stroke though Tony’s hair and down his jaw. He doesn’t know how long he does this for, but at some point, Clint’s phone buzzes aggressively in the other room, muted lightly by Clint’s pillow, and he gets out of bed and leaves the apartment, coming back up half a minute later with Kate in tow. She seems pretty drunk. Clint tries to shush her as she loudly asks how things went with Coulson.

‘I don’t know,’ he whispers. ‘He keeps trying to break up with me. Though he insists we don’t have a relationship. So that’s fun.’ He sounds sort of sad, the cheer in his voice clearly fake.

‘I think you should just go for it.’ She pauses to hiccup. ‘Like, sit on his dick. He’s never gonna get rid of you once he’s had that tight ass.’ She slaps his ass, then stumbles and almost walks into the doorframe of the bedroom. They disappear inside.

There’s quiet for a moment. The rustle of clothes and sheets.

‘Can we just – like, what we did when the whole thing with Eli happened.’

‘You too scared to say fuck?’, Kate asks, smile in her voice.

The bedroom door is still open and Bruce can hear the sound of their lips meeting beyond. They’re really quiet about it, but the sounds of their moans and their skin slapping together is unmistakable. Bruce is sort of surprised, but mostly tries not to think about them too much. Kate is only two years younger than Tony is, but that still means she’s underage. He doesn’t want to be a creep and think of her having sex. Clint, though, is sort of distracting. His moans are quiet and cut-off, almost strangled. The closer he gets to his orgasm, the more he drags them out, like he’s not holding himself back as much anymore.

Bruce is sort of turned on by it, the quietness of it. The bed creaking a little as their fucking speeds up, Kate’s loud breathing, Clint’s moans, his quiet whimper as he comes.

They spend some time whispering to each other before they go to sleep. Bruce doesn’t manage to drift off again, just strokes Tony’s jaw and his hair and stares at the TV.


	19. Birthday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

On Saturday evening, they four of them part ways. Clint is going for dinner with Natasha the way he often does on Saturdays, while Tony, Kate and Bruce help prepare Natasha’s sorority house for her birthday party. It’s a strange house, a strange sorority.

When Bruce thinks of sorority girls, he thinks of wealthy, connected girls, so far away from his life that he’s never really thought of them as real people. They’re like movie stars or Europeans. He knows they exist, has even seen them on TV, but has never met any in person. 

He never really imagined what sorority girls would be like, but he knows how they’re portrayed in movies. Blonde and beautiful and long-legged. Sharp and ruthless and selfish.

Nat’s sorority (which uses the Cyrillic alphabet instead of the Greek one) is nothing like that. 

The first thing Bruce notices is that, with the exception of three girls, all the girls are really short. As short as Natasha, who is shorter than him and therefore really really short. Their clothes are messy, like they hand-made them but didn’t have a lot of experience yet. Some of them speak Russian among each other. They know their way around knives, using them for things Bruce never thought he’d need them for, like tying helium balloons and scraping dirt off furniture.

The girl Bruce helps to hang lanterns in the sorority house’s small garden, flirts with him the entire time they’re working. She’s good at it, too. It makes him nervous, though, and he keeps fumbling with the threads. His leg is acting up, too, from working outside. It’s still pretty cold, although it hasn’t frozen again. To his surprise, Tony comes rushing into the garden fifteen minutes in.

‘Oh, Bruce! Here you are! You wanna go inside? I’ll help finish up here.’

‘No, I’m fine. We’re almost done.’

‘I wanted to get some air. You can paint the window instead.’

‘Okay’, Bruce says. He doesn’t really know why Tony is so insistent. It really doesn’t matter to him, but he goes inside. Steve is painting something really elaborate onto the window, mirroring everything so that it’ll show up the right way on the outside of the window.

‘Was Tony helping you?’, Bruce asks him. ‘Because he sent me inside to take his place?’

‘Oh, yeah, he was writing the happy birthday stuff. Bucky wrote out something funny in Russian, too, that we’re supposed to paint onto the window in reverse.’

Bruce nods, picking up where Tony left off. It’s sort of nice, talking to Steve while writing something he doesn’t even understand mirrored on paper, then painting it onto the window in thick, pink paint. It’s an easy task, Steve is easy to have a conversation with, and his position on the windowsill presses his bad leg right up against the warm radiator.

He’ll have to thank Tony for that later.

Natasha arrives from dinner an hour later, Clint and James in tow. 

She seems incredibly happy that they threw her a surprise party. She’s hugging everyone, even Bruce. She even kisses him on the cheek.

It’s the nice kind of party, with enough space and no bad people. Bruce does shots with Thor and Bucky, dances with Tony and Clint. There’s still a girl that flirts with him a lot. He thinks she’s just doing it to figure out what kind of person he is. He dances with her, too.

Tony looks happy. He seems to be everywhere, doing a weird dance move with Natasha, riding on Steve’s back, doing body shots with half the girls. He doesn’t spend that much time with Bruce, really, but Bruce is still aware of where Tony is the entire party.

Bruce himself spends a while talking to Kate on the stairs, mainly about impractical clothing, but then about chronical injuries as well. Kate is very honest in a way that isn’t hurtful. She’s very easy to talk to, especially now that Bruce has had a few drinks. She drags him onto the dancefloor eventually, then leaves him to flirt with one of the sorority girls. 

Bruce dances with Clint, who is happy and energetic and dances like a maniac. He pulls Bruce into a hug several times, just to yell into his ear what an amazing night this is. Bruce doesn’t mind. He agrees.

Natasha dances with him, too. She’s underdressed, since she didn’t know there was going to be a party. She’s wearing jeans and a tank top, but she’s wearing one of those ‘It’s my birthday, kiss me!’ satchels overtop, and a really big, golden inflatable birthday crown. It keeps falling off, but she insists on keeping it on. Her lipstick is dark, pretty much black in the low light. She looks happy. She hugs Bruce, too.

This is not the kind of party he’d usually go to. Parties are a way to avoid sleep. A way to get free booze. A way to punish himself, the too-loud music and the constant touches. This is nothing like that. He doesn’t feel as stupid drinking too much, knowing he can sleep over and doesn’t have to walk all the way home. He doesn’t have time to think bad thoughts. He isn’t here alone.

Normally, when he goes outside to smoke, he feels overwhelmed and becomes aware of his throbbing headache, but now he just feels quiet.

There’s no one else outside, since it’s really cold and not a lot of people smoke. There’s the lanterns that him and Natasha’s friend hung that afternoon, though, so Bruce stares out into the garden while he smokes, listening to the music from inside.

After a cigarette and a half, Tony joins him. He doesn’t even smoke, just sits beside Bruce. There’s a smudge of maroon lipstick on the corner of his mouth, like he tried to wipe it off, but didn’t get all of it.

‘Bruce?’

Bruce hums in response.

‘Are we like, a thing? Like an exclusive thing?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

‘We should be, right? We spend a lot of time together. We fuck. We’re adorable together. All my friends think we’re together.’

‘But you don’t want to be together?’, Bruce asks. He’s drunk enough that he can let that slip out of his mind before it can hurt him. Relationships are always so complicated and messy. It’s dealing with the different expectations of two people, trying to line up two things that will never quite fit perfectly.

‘I don’t know,’ Tony says. ‘You know, Yelena was kissing me and she’s really good at it and she’s so hot and I’ve talked to her before and I really like her. And she wanted to go upstairs and fuck.’

Bruce nods. He tries not to think of Tony kissing someone else. Someone as beautiful as Yelena.

‘I said no. Because… I think it’d make me feel guilty. And because – because I thought maybe if I fucked someone else, we wouldn’t fuck anymore, you know? And if we don’t fuck, maybe we wouldn’t see each other anymore and I really want to keep seeing you.’

‘But you don’t want to be together? Or you don’t want to be exclusive.’

Tony is quiet for a long time. ‘I think I do want to be exclusive. Because I think even if we’re not in a relationship, if either of us fucked someone else, that’d be hurtful, right?’

Bruce nods.

‘But I – I’m fucked up, okay? Every relationship I’ve had, I’ve screwed up. I don’t want to go through all that stress again. And I don’t want to put Steve through that again, either.’

Bruce has no idea what Tony is talking about, but he nods anyway. ‘Isn’t that what a relationship is, though? Hanging out and fucking and being exclusive?’

Tony sighs, cigarette smoke crawling over his face. He hands the cigarette back to Bruce. His voice is much quieter when he speaks again, which is definitely a bad sign. ‘I don’t know. Aren’t you supposed to be in love with me, for it to be a relationship?’

More quiet follows. Bruce doesn’t know what to say to that. It didn’t sound accusatory, but it feels like an accuisation.

‘I won’t make it weird,’ Tony says when the silence drags on for too long. ‘I know you’re not really into me, but I swear I’m not gonna be clingy or anything.’

Bruce still has no idea how to react, but he’s going to have to sometime soon, before Tony can get this wrong entirely. ‘I’m – Tony, I… Tony.’ He has no fucking idea what to say. He grabs Tony’s shoulder, feeling like he’s doing this all wrong. Maybe it’s good that he’s drunk, that he can’t overthink this too much. Or maybe this is too important. Maybe he should have a clear head for this. 

‘I don’t know how to be in love,’ he says. ‘I was, with Betty, but I’m different now. I don’t know if it’s still the same. But I like you.’ Tony shakes his head minutely, not quite making eye contact ‘I like you so much, Tony I swear.’

‘But ‘like’ is not ‘love’, right? If we’re in love everything is gonna go wrong. I’m not – I’m not an easy person to love. Let’s just –‘ He lets out a frustrated breath, unable to find the words. ‘I know I’m sort of falling for you, but we should ignore that. We should, like – be friends, and fuck and whatever, but if you love me everything is going to be a mess.’

Bruce feels like he doesn’t have all of the information. He feels like that a lot when Tony tries to talk about feelings. 

‘Can we do that? Like, friends with benefits. But not the way they show friends with benefits to be in movies. Like actual, good, close friends who do stuff other than fuck. Exactly what we’re already doing, really.’

‘Yeah. That’s – a good idea.’ It really does sound like a good idea. It sounds simple and painless and doable. He knows he’s not going to feel the same when he’s sober, that he’ll feel all the fear and worry that’s dulled right now full force tomorrow, but that’s okay. He can have this right now.

Bruce hands his cigarette to Tony, who takes a drag and hands it back. They smoke it together. They go back inside.


	20. Rhodey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this entire chapter on my phone, so excuse any spelling errors. I'll run it through a spelling checker once I have acces to my laptop again. :)
> 
> I've also edited chapter 14 because some parts of it just didn't make any sense. Nothing that changed really matters for the overall plot, but you can go check it out if you're curious.
> 
> I don't think there's anything I need to warn for in this chapter except that there's a blowjob somewhere halfway through. Of course if there's anything I do need to warn about, let me know! I try my best to warn for eveything unpleasant/triggering, but I can always forget about something.

It's nearly seven in the morning by the time most of them get to bed.

Steve gets up after an hour to go jogging, but when he comes back later, freshly showered though he's wearing the same clothes as yesterday, he lies down on the mattress in the corner, the one Tony has occupied and that Steve briefly shared with him before he went on his run. Tony doesn't wake up as much as he just blinks a couple of times and grasps for the blanket Steve is draping over them both before falling back asleep, but he's awake enough to wrap around Steve before he does. Steve is lying on his back, Tony on top of him, wrapped around him like an octopus, undoubtedtly drooling into Steve's hair.

Bruce is still awake, knows there's no way he'll ever be able to sleep surrounded by so many people. It's nice, though, comfortable. 

He doesn't try to think about Tony and Steve. He knows this is good for Tony, that Tony needs and deserves touch and that Steve can give him that. It doesn't keep Bruce from being jealous, though.

Steve is beautiful and not a single part of him is broken. He doesn't punch people when they don't wake him up right, he doesn't feel horrible when someone touches him, he doesn't have any problems taking care of Tony the way Tony deserves. There's no way Bruce can compete with him. He shouldn't even want to compete with him. Tony deserves better than Bruce, deserves someone like Steve.

Bruce rolls over on his other side to make himself stop looking at their entangled bodies. He doesn't manage to sleep, as expected, but in the next few hours, he gets some rest.

In the early afternoon, some of the girls and Bucky disappear into the kitchen to make breakfast.

Tony and Steve are still entangled, though now Steve is mostly draped over Tony. They're both lying on their stomach, Steve's head pressed to Tony's upper back in a place where Bruce knows he'll be able to hear Tony's heartbeat.

He gets up, making sure he's still toroughly covered by the long sleeved shirt and leggings he's wearing. The shirt is white and the leggings bright red, but no one in the house seems to care about questionable fashion choices. His outfit isn't even the brightest out of all of them.

He goes into the kitchen, where he's greeted by a handful of quiet _good morning_ s.

Angela is making pancake batter. Bucky is frying vegetables in a pan while Felicia stirs eggs. Neena is cutting up fruit for smoothies, so Bruce goes and helps her. Natasha is sitting at the table eating blueberries and smiling slightly. She's put her birthday crown back on.

Bruce sits next to her once all the fruit is cut and Neena gets to work with a blender. Natasha grins at him and pops another blueberry into her mouth. Angela eventually comes to steal them away to put in the pancakes, so Natahsa turns her attention to Bruce. She's about to say something just when Steve drifts into the kitchen. He walks over to James and kisses his temple before greeting the rest of the room. 

Natahsa looks back at Bruce, still with that relaxed little smile. He's a little distracted, though, thinking about how Steve should have stayed with Tony longer, should have given him more touch.

Thor walks in after Steve and sits down next to Bruce, Kate close behind him. She goes up to Steve to ruffle his hair and starts talking to him and James about something that happened yesterday.

That leaves just Tony, Clint and one of the sorority sisters, Greer, still asleep. Bruce is starting to worry that Tony regrets their conversation from yesterday so much that he's just going to pretend to be asleep until Bruce leaves. It's dumb to think that. Bruce knows Tony likes to sleep in when he can, he knows that Tony was asking for something he wanted yesterday. Bruce is the one who normally regrets stuff, not Tony.

But Bruce, somehow, isn't uncomfortable with their descisions from yesterday. He's anxious and doubts it'll be simple for both of them to be in something as close to a relationship as they're willing to get right now. But he wants to try. Wants it to work.

Steve starts handing out mismatched plates and cutelry while James and the girls put all the food out on the table. There's a giant thermos of coffee that everyone goes for right away and it has to be refilled twice by the time breakfast is over. 

Bruce mostly eats pancakes, though he gets himself to eat some of the vegetable omelette, just to feel a little less unhealthy.

Tony comes in for breakfast last, making Thor and Bruce move their chairs so he can sit inbetween them. He only drinks coffee and half a glass of beetroot smoothie, but that's still more nutrients than most of Tony's breakfasts.

Everyone is eating slowly, probably because of hangovers, but it's nice, everyone talking lazily, pretending like they have nothing else to worry about for a little while.

Natasha nudges Bruce's thigh and Bruce startles, but doesn't flinch. Tony gives her a glare anyway.

'You wanna go for a smoke?', she asks.

He nods, getting that she's only asking because she wants to talk to him. Natasha doesn't smoke. He tries not to worry about the kind of things Natasha might have to say to him.

On their way out of the kitchen, she gestures at James in a way he immediately understands, although it doesn't look like much to Bruce. He follows them out to the backyard after they've put on shoes and coats.

Bruce lights a cigarette because smoking is probably a more important part of his mornings than food by now. He waits for Natahsa to say what she wants to say.

'You're really jealous of Steve,' is what she eventually tells him.

He doesn't deny it, makes a weird noise that could be a snort or a sigh or a dismissal, he doesn't really know.

'Oh,' James says. 'Oh, of course you are.'

'Yeah,' Bruce manages.

'He's married, okay? Nothing to worry about.'

'Have you seen Tony and him? How can I not be worried?' 

'Look, I know what that's like, okay. When I see Tony and him, all I can think is that I can never hold him like that. And that I can never be his friend in the same way Tony is. But they're - they could have been together and they aren't because they're the least compatible people on the face of the earth. Steve still comes home to me every night, and all Tony ever talks about to Steve is you. So, um, I know it's hard and that it goes against your own head, but try not to worry about it, okay?'

James glances around like he's uncomfortable and Bruce notices that Natasha left at some point after initiating the conversation.

'They've always been like this. If you keep feeling bad about it, you're just gonna drive yourself nuts.'

Bruce nods, stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray on the windowsill and shoves his hands into his pockets. 'Thanks,' he mumbles.

They're quiet as they go back inside. Right before they're about to go into the kitchen, James's voice stops Bruce. 'Hey? You still go to therapy right?'

Bruce is surprised by the question, although maybe he shouldn't be. After James and him fucked, he changed the day of his appointment so he wouldn't walk into James anymore. For all James knows, he could have just stopped going altogether.

'Yeah,' Bruce tells him.

James doesn't hide his smile when Tony is trying to show Bruce something as soon as they enter the kitchen.

They stay at the sorority house long past dinner, which consists of more breakfast foods.

Tony doesn't eat a lot, but Bruce just vows to make sure he eats well tomorrow instead of pointing it out in front of everyone. 

Tony doesn't even ask Bruce if he wants to go to his own apartment or Tony's, just drives them to Tony's, and Bruce can't say he minds.

They sleep on the couches, but neither of them seems to be able to go to sleep, so they move to the bed somewhere after three am. They each have their seperate blankets and they don't touch, but at least Tony gets a couple of hours of sleep.

Bruce doesn't. He keeps thinking about how easily Steve and Tony shared a twin mattress. How he can't imagine ever being able to do that. 

They sleep in again, because it's Sunday and they went to bed way too late yesterday, playing a videogame Clint had left at Tony's that they both sucked at.

It’s eleven am by the time Tony starts to stir.

'Hey,' he says, smiling blearily at Bruce when he sees he's awake. His lips are dry and his hair is sticking up and his eyes look like they have glue in them, but Tony still looks too beautiful for Bruce to process. 'Do you have plans for lunch?'

Bruce shakes his head.

'What number are you at?'

Bruce raises three fingers, then a fourth one, once he realises three isn't enough. 

So Tony grabs his wrist, stroking the inside of it, playing with Bruce's fingers. 'Positive, neutral or negative?'

Bruce shrugs, then lifts his other hand and waves it in a seesaw motion, indicating that he doesn't really know, doesn't really feel like any of the three right now.

'If I sucked you off, would it be okay?'

Bruce takes a moment to think about it. Then he nods.

So Tony scoots closer, kisses Bruce's hipbone while he starts to tug at the hem of his pants. He's still holding on to Bruce's fingers with the other hand.

Bruce hasn't really had an actual blowjob from Tony yet. The only time Tony sucked him off, it was because he was trying to learn something new. It's not the same as this.

It's clear that Tony has done this a lot. He licks and bobs his head and sucks in a way that's a little too much too fast for Bruce. He uses all kinds of little tricks and they work, but they work for anyone. He goes from sensitive spot to sensitive spot like it's his job.

It takes a little time for the real magic to happen. Tony pays attention, is a quick learner, figures out in two minutes not how to make anyone go crazy, but how to make Bruce go crazy specifically.

Bruce strokes through Tony's hair, tugs at it at the same time that he bucks his hips a little, not enough to disturb Tony's rythm, but enough for Tony to let out a shaky moan around his cock.

It's not surprising at all, that somehow Tony is noisier than Bruce is, despite having his mouth full.

Bruce doesn't notice what Tony is doing at first. Tony is sucking just right, and Bruce can feel his orgasm start to build. Tony probably doesn't realise, because he pulls off and starts to lick and suck at the base of Bruce's cock.

Then he does it again, licks at the slit of Bruce's cock and sucks at the head until Bruce is ready to come, then moves on to suck bruises into Bruce's thigh.

There's a thrid time and a fourth time that Tony gets Bruce right to the edge and then lets him come back down, and Bruce is a mess, all sweaty, his muscles tense and relaxed at the same time. He's so keyed up that it only takes Tony a couple of minutes to get him back to the edge each time.

The fifth time, Bruce still wants to be patient, wants to let Tony do whatever he's doing, but then when he's coming down, watching Tony grin where he's mouthing at Bruce's balls, Bruce starts to think that maybe this isn't about edging Bruce. That would be too much unlike Tony. He isn't a patient person, isn't interested in delayed gratification when he can get everything he wants right away, doesn't like sex when he has to be in control. It's about getting Bruce to let go, about teasing him until he takes control.

Two can play at that game, so Bruce starts subtle, bucks his hips every now and then as if he can't help himself, tugs at Tony's hair and watches how he can barely keep his hands off himself.

Then, when they're at the seventh time, he holds Tony's head down on his cock when he's about to pull off. It's only for a second, but apparently that's plenty. Tony pulls off, squeezing his eyes shut as one hand goes for his cock. He's not jerking off, just squeezing down at the base so he doesn't come.

Bruce raises and eyebrow at him. Tony sticks out his tongue and gets back to work.

Bruce teases Tony through the eight time, figuring out that it drives Tony crazy when Bruce nudges at Tony's crotch with his foot while he thrusts shallowly into Tony's mouth.

Bruce is exhausted and Tony's jaw must be sore by now, so when he feels his orgasm start to build for the ninth time, he grabs Tony by his hair, making sure not to pull too hard, and thrusts into his mouth before Tony can pull off to let Bruce come down again. He doesn't thrust too deeply, but every so many strokes, he pushes in a little further, making Tony gag a little. Bruce does it again and to his surprise, Tony's body tenses, his muscles spasming. Bruce comes into Tony's mouth when he realises Tony came just from giving a blowjob.

Tony rests his head on Bruce's thigh, stretching his neck to look at Bruce, while they both catch their breath. Bruce strokes through his hair.

Bruce must drift off at some point, because when he opens his eyes again, over an hour has gone by. Tony isn't in bed anymore, but he can hear the shower running.

Tony comes out of the bathroom not much later. 'You wanna sleep some more?', he asks. His hair is still wet, but he already has clothes on.

Bruce shakes his head. He knows he probably won't fall asleep again, trying will only be frustrating.

'You wanna go for lunch, then?'

'Is it gonna be expensive lunch?', Bruce asks as he sits up.

'You don't have to pay.'

'I want to pay.'

'Rhodey will pay.'

Tony has told him about Rhodey. They have been best friends since Tony's first year of college, but Rhodey moved to DC last year for a high-profile internship. When they call each other, it takes four hours at the least.

'Okay,' Bruce says, figuring he can always attempt to pay for himself later. Maybe Rhodey is more reasonable about money than Tony is.

Bruce takes a shower, too, locking the door because the idea of Tony seeing his scars still makes him nervous. 

He dresses in a pair of pants he finds that's definitely Tony's and a T-shirt that he knows for sure is his. He's pretty sure Tony can't tell which clothes are his and which are ones Bruce left at his apartment, because the shirt is freshly washed.

Once Bruce is ready, Tony drives them to the crappiest-looking diner in the world, not the kind of place Bruce would expect a DC guy who's planning on climbing the Airforce ladder all the way to the top to eat.

'What's his real name?', Bruce asks in the car.

'What?'

'I can't call him Rhodey.'

'Oh, yeah, his name is James. I think people call him Jim most of the time.'

Jim is already there, dressed in casual clothes that don’t match his straight posture, typing on his phone. When he notices Tony, he smiles and turns his phone off. He gives Tony a hug, then steals Tony's phone out of his back pocket and turns it off, too.

Then he turns to Bruce.

'You must be Bruce.' His smile is friendly but doesn't seem as real as it did when he was looking at Tony.

'You must be Jim,' Bruce returns awkwardly. 

He doesn't know if he likes Jim. He's too intimidating. Betty and Blonsky are both total messes. So are Jane and Clint and Tony and even Thor and Natasha and Bucky. Bruce doesn't feel as bad around them for being a screw up as he does around people like Steve or Jim, who seem like they have their lives together completely. So really it's not that he doesn't like Jim as much as it's just that he doesn't like to be confronted with how little he likes himself.

The waiter seems to know Tony and Jim and jokes with them as she points them to a corner booth.

Bruce tries to order the cheapest thing – a burger with no sides - but Tony orders a bunch of natchos for him, insisting that they're the best ones in all of Massachusetts and then orders two portions of fries for himself and shoves one towards Bruce once they get their food.

Rhodey mostly asks about how university is going, probably because that's a topic Bruce can talk about, too. Rhodey majored in Physics, so conversation comes easy.

Then he asks about Tony's friends, how they're doing, and Tony's face goes a little sour. 'You need to stop crushing on Natasha.'

'I didn't even ask about her.'

'You were going to.'

'I'm not gonna get into this, Tones,' Jim says with an amused smile.

'Why did you come out here, anyway? I thought you were coming over next Friday.'

'Yeah. Just happened to be in town.'

'For work?'

'Yeah. We were negotiating defense contracts with some companies here.' That sounds like a lie to Bruce. Tony doesn't seem to notice.

'Pepper said she was gonna come into town, too, but she had some work emergency.'

'Yeah. Someone is suing her boss.' Not a lie.

'How do you know that?'

'I walked into her at the airport.' Lie. Jim looks too guilty to be speaking the truth. Tony again doesn't notice, but Bruce is too familiar with that feeling not to recognize it on someone else.

'And you actually had a conversation with her instead of just bickering?'

Jim smiles. 'I told you, we're trying to get along.' He looks even more guilty. Bruce doesn't like it.

'Are you getting along well enough to fly out together sometime?'

'Sure.'

Tony grins at him.

Jim finishes most of his food and so does Bruce. They're both trying to get Tony to eat more of his in their own ways and eventually Tony finishes three quarters of his food and they're both satisfied.

Jim comes back with them to Tony's apartment and they spend the rest of the day watching TV and playing video games. Clint comes over by three and him and Jim go grocery shopping.

Bruce naps, finally able to sleep at least a little. He's pretty sure Tony mostly just stares at him while he sleeps.

'What number are you at?', Tony asks.

Bruce is half awake, but he mumbles 'Four.'

Tony sits on his knees on the carpet, next to Bruce's couch and Bruce falls asleep while Tony is massging his claves.

When he wake up, Tony is sleeping, too, his forehead pressed against the back of Bruce's thigh. 

Bruce sits up a little, considering. Tony needs touch to be okay, and Bruce is sleepy and mellow enough right now to give it to Tony without feeling bad. So he carefully gets off the couch and pulls Tony down on the carpet with him. Tony mumbles something, but doesn't wake up. He wraps around Bruce instantly. Bruce is on his back, Tony curled up against him.

The next time Bruce wakes up, he can hear Jim and Clint talking quietly. There's the sound of something sizzeling in a pan, and an amazing smell coming from the kitchen.

Tony is behind Bruce, spooning him. Bruce is careful to detangle himself from the embrace and gets up. It's dark outside, which is sort of disoorienting. Jim's plane is leaving at ten, though, so it can't be that late.

Bruce goes to take a piss in a bathroom and then goes to the kitchen to greet Clint and Jim. Jim is making quesedillas with pork and ridiculous amounts of cheese.

He seems softer in the kitchen, more relaxed and less focused. It’s sort of cute. Clint is sitting on the table and looking at Jim’s ass while eating chips.

Tony wakes up not much later and changes his outfit before he joins them in the kitchen.

Dinner is nice. Tony keeps adding extra cheese to Bruce’s quesedilla and Clint tells Jim about Natasha’s birthday party.

Tony and Clint decide to play video games immediately after dinner, which leaves Bruce and Jim to do the dishes.

The kitchen and the living room are pretty much the same room, but the couches are far enough from the sink that Jim doesn’t even have to keep his voice down to avoid Tony and Clint overhearing them when he speaks. Especialy with the ruckus of the game and Clint and Tony’s bickering, there’s no need for Jim to be quiet.

He sounds almost casual when he says it, ‘Tony has been put through a lot of shit by a lot of people, and you don’t seem like you’d do that to him, but I feel like I should tell you that if you do, I will come for you. There’s not a lot of things I wouldn’t do for that kid.’

Bruce nods. ‘Of course,’ he manages. He feels like he should be sort of scared for the determination in Jim’s voice, but mostly he just feels deeply happy to know that someone is looking out for Tony like that.

‘Tones, come on, I don’t wanna miss my flight,’ Jim yells to Tony once all the dishes have been put back in the cupboards. Tony is probably gonna rearrange them later.

‘I want you to miss your flight,’ Tony yells back. Bruce doesn’t know if it’s strictly necessary for them to be this loud. ‘You can sleep here. I’ll call Natasha, we can make it a sleepover.’

Jim does eventually manage to get Tony to put on shoes and drive him to the airport.

Bruce takes over Tony’s controller and plays video games againt Clint.


	21. Cantaloupe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what happened. I sort of forgot to update this, I think. So I'm sorry, it might happen again. I hope you're all doing well and thanks for sticking with me!

Clint sleeps over. Tony and him share the bed while Bruce takes the couch. It's not surprising that he's back to being repelled by any kind of touch after the brief period of time he didn't mind it as much. Tony seems disappointed anyway.

Bruce goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and Clint and Tony are holding hands, Clint's cheek pressed against Tony's shoulder, but not touching anywhere else. The way they're lying there, mouths slightly open and features relaxed, they look like little kids. It's sort of heart-warming.

Tony gets out of bed early, before the sun is even coming up. He looks a little out of it and doesn't look at Bruce, just sits at the kitchen table, opens the window and smokes a cigarette.

He's shivering in the cold early morning air coming through the window and he closes it once the cigarette is done. Then he grabs another cigarette, but doesn't light it, just twists it between his fingers as he chews on his lip.

He's sitting pretty far away from Bruce, who is still lying on the couch, but even from there, Bruce can hear how Tony's breathing speeds up, faster and faster until it's interrupted by a sob. Tony is still shaking and Bruce wants to go to him, wants to comfort him, but he knows when he himself is hyperventilating, the last thing he wants is having someone near him, having someone see him. So he squeezes his eyes shut to try and let Tony have some privacy.

Tony takes a while, but eventually the sobs lessen and his breathing evens out. He starts rearranging everything inside the kitchen cupboards, making sure everything is in exactly the right place, at exactly the right angle.

Then he starts wiping every surface in the kitchen clean.

Bruce figures that's an okay time for him to get up, so he does, yawning as he sits up and nods at Tony. Tony greets him with nothing but a brief glance at first, then adds a distracted 'hey' a couple of minutes later.

He's gotten three clean bowls out of the cupboard and is washing those in the sink. Bruce doesn't comment and goes into the bathroom to wash up and change.

By the time he comes out, Tony is apparently done cleaning and is watching TV. Bruce joins him. Tony looks tired, but doesn't fall asleep like he often does in front of the TV.

When Clint wakes up a couple of hours later, Bruce and Tony are still watching Spongebob. Like most Spongebob episodes, it's one Bruce has already seen a million times. Spongebob was one of the few things Bruce liked that never irritated his dad.

Clint sits down in between them. It's probably the first time that Tony hasn't tried to touch Bruce while sitting so close together, which is slightly worrying.

Tony is still chewing his lip and barely reacts when Clint asks him if he wants cornflakes. Clint shrugs and goes to get a carton of milk, a box of cornflakes and three bowls and spoons from the kitchen.

After a couple more episodes, Tony pours a handful of cornflakes into a bowl and eats them without any milk.

Yesterday, Tony promised to drive Clint to his dentist's appointment, so at eleven, the three of them get ready and get into the car.

Tony looks more focused when he’s driving, but barely says anything while Clint and Bruce (but mostly Clint) make conversation.

On the drive back, Bruce offers Tony a chocolate bar he found in Tony’s car, but Tony declines. He doesn’t eat anything for the rest of the day. Bruce gets him to drink a ton of water and coffee, but Tony takes none of the food Bruce offers.

He’s tired and grouchy the whole day, so he naps while Bruce studies, then puts on a movie and leans against the side of the couch as he naps through that, too.

By four, Tony is starting to get antsy. He tried chewing gum, but then he spit that into the trashcan only a couple minutes after putting it into his mouth. He’s cleaning the kitchen for the second time in a hour and the one time Bruce tries to touch him, he flinches away.

‘What’s going on?’, Bruce asks.

Tony shrugs. His lip trembles slightly. ‘It’s not – I’m working through it. It’s fine.’

‘Can I help?’

Tony shakes his head. ‘I should just try to sleep, really. Or maybe you should fuck it better?’

‘No,’ Bruce says right away. Tony looks almost like a child the way he is right now, eyes big, voice quieter than usual, hunched in on himself to the point where he looks smaller than Bruce. It’s not exactly a turn-on.

Tony sighs. ‘I could masturbate, then. You could watch.’ He’s quiet for a bit, then seems to change his mind. ‘That’s too much work. You really don’t want to fuck me?’

‘No, I really don’t.’

‘And like finger me or fuck me with a dildo or something?’

‘No, Tony.’

‘Handjob?’

‘No.’

Tony drags a hand through his hair, looking lost. ‘Maybe I should call Steve. He always knows what to do when everything gets weird.’

‘Does this happen a lot?’

‘Not that much anymore with the meds. But those don’t always help.’

‘And what does Steve do about it?’

‘He – I don’t know. Sometimes he holds me really tight. Or sometimes he just talks about – about stuff or he takes a nap with me or something. He always tries to distract me. To make me tired or angry or something. And then I’m so distracted it just goes away.’

‘Yeah, maybe you should call him,’ Bruce says. He has no idea how to deal with this. He can’t even deal with his own bad days. He feels so stupid and useless. 

‘You don’t want to distract me?’

‘I have no idea how.’

‘You always distract me when I feel shitty. We could go out and get really drunk? Or you could… I honestly sort of want you to choke me right now. Like, hold me down and choke me hard. That would be nice.’

‘It wouldn’t be nice.’

Tony piques up, grinning in a way that’s sort of terrifying in how manic it looks. ‘I have vodka. That’s going to fix me.’

He turns around and sprints to the kitchen, grabbing vodka and two glasses. He fills one up liberally and takes a couple of gulps from his, drinking way too fast to ever be okay. He has to hold on to the table to keep upright.

Bruce rushes to him, easing the glass out of his hand before Tony can drink more than a shot’s worth. ‘That’s about enough,’ Bruce says, trying to be gentle although he’s sort of panicking. ‘You said sleeping might help, right?’

Tony ignores him and tries to take his glass back. When that doesn’t work, he goes for the bottle. It’s pretty easy to take it from him and screw on the cap again, keeping the bottle out of reach and putting it back in a cabinet, then holding Tony back from the cabinet.

Tony gives up after ten seconds of struggling. Bruce is relieved that this won’t have to be a whole thing, but gets worried when he sees how the look on Tony’s face slowly shifts from blank to completely defeated. ‘I’m – I think I’m gonna try to sleep.’

‘We could go to the supermarket?’

Tony seems disappointed or anxious or some type of emotion Bruce can’t figure out. ‘No, I’m really not feeling good. I don’t want to go outside,’ he says, like Bruce isn’t getting it.

‘We’re gonna find something to eat.’

‘I can’t eat right now. I swear just the thought makes me gag.’

‘You can touch me as much as you want the whole time.’

That seems to grab Tony’s attention. ‘Are you sure? What number are you at?’

‘Three, and I’m sure. Come on.’

Tony follows him downstairs. Bruce gets behind the wheel. They’re quiet in the car. Bruce drives to the Whole Foods across town because he knows Tony can afford it. Once they leave the car, Tony grabs Bruce’s upper arm almost shyly and leans against him.

It’s eight thirty by now, but the store is brightly lit, the fluorescents making everything look fake, plastic. 

There’s not too many people in the store and those who are have their eyes on price tags and ingredients lists and grocery lists. No one pays them any mind as Tony presses his face into Bruce’s neck, breathing a little shallow. It’s nice. Bruce is uncomfortable with the touch, but it’s nice at the same time. How much Tony seems to need this, how much he seems to savour this.

He lets Tony lead him around the store. ‘All of this looks gross,’ he mumbles, more to himself than to Bruce, it seems. They end up at the fruits and vegetables section pretty quickly. Instead of looking at the food, Tony stops and turns, wrapping his arms around Bruce.

Bruce hugs him back, trying not to think about the lady picking out carrots at the other end of the isle. She’s hopefully progressive enough to disregard two college-age guys in slightly different shades of purple sweatpants hugging it out in a grocery store.

Tony takes a shuddering breath, keeping his face pressed against Bruce’s shoulder, not letting go of him. Bruce pulls away so that he can shove his hands into Tony’s open coat to hug him closer. It’s not necessarily the easiest way to hug someone, but Bruce wants to make this worthwhile for Tony, in case they don’t find any food Tony can stomach right now. 

It’s minutes before Tony lifts his head and leans back a little to look at Bruce. ‘Can I get a kiss?’

Bruce waits for a moment. Tony is so beautiful like this, face unguarded and honest. Bruce presses his lips to Tony’s, pulling him closer by his waist. The kiss only lasts five seconds, but that seems to be okay with Tony. Tony pulls away, leaving Bruce’s arms cold where they’re back in open air after being under Tony’s coat.

Tony ignores the vegetables and goes straight for the fruits. He makes a face at the strawberries and his grimace only deepens at the apples, pears and bananas. He picks up a grapefruit, then puts it back. No mangoes or oranges or cherries. Tentatively, he grabs a cantaloupe. For a long moment, he just looks at it. 

‘I think maybe this will work. It’s pretty much just water anyway, right?’

‘Yeah. You need anything else?’

Tony shakes his head and goes back to holding onto Bruce’s arm and leaning against him, the cantaloupe under his other arm. 

There’s not a lot of people at the check-out. They’re out of the store in no time.

‘Wait,’ Tony says once they get to the car and have put away the cantaloupe. He puts his arms around Bruce again. ‘I wanna take advantage of this.’

He presses his lips against Bruce’s neck, reaching up to tangle one hand in Bruce’s hair. 

‘I don’t know if we should make out in a parking lot,’ Bruce mumbles. There’s not that many people around, but only one homophobe is enough.

There’s a smile on Tony’s face when he glances up at Bruce. ‘Do you mean you want to make out?’

Bruce just looks at him.

‘There’s barely anyone here. And if any of them are really conservative, they won’t even take offence, they’ll just think we’re really good friends or brothers or something.’

‘Gross.’

‘And we’re in the 21st century, in Massachusetts. Being a homophobe is frowned upon much more than being gay.’

Bruce takes a moment to look at Tony’s face. His so ridiculously beautiful. He looks less out of it, which means at least going to the supermarket helped as a distraction, even if the cantaloupe turns out not to help. His cheeks are rosy from the evening air. His eyes are big and focused on Bruce’s lips.

Bruce puts one hand on Tony’s cheek. He’s slow to lean in. Tony keeps still, waiting for Bruce to take initiative. As soon as their lips connect, Tony’s hand in his hair pulls him closer, his other hand going to Bruce’s waist.

Bruce puts his other hand on the back of Tony’s neck. He makes sure to keep control of the kiss, to not let it get heated at all. When he pulls away, Tony smiles. 

‘Thank you for this,’ he says. ‘Seriously.’

Bruce shrugs. ‘Let’s go try that cantaloupe,’ he mumbles because he doesn’t really know what else to say. His face feels hot, but not in a bad way.

The drive is quiet. Once they get to the apartment, they don’t say anything either. Bruce cuts open the cantaloupe while Tony goes to wash his hands. He scoops out the seeds of one half and cuts it into wedges.

Tony insists on wiping down the entire kitchen before he even tries the cantaloupe, but once he does, he eats a whole wedge, then another, then a couple more.

Bruce nibbles on one, too, as he watches the tension slowly seep out of Tony. Tony finishes half the cantaloupe on his own. Bruce wraps the rest of it in plastic wrap and puts it in the fridge.

‘You ever had a fresh watermelon in California?’, Tony asks.

‘Yeah.’

‘Pretty magical, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can we go to Cali sometime?’

‘Yeah, of course.’

Tony sleeps a little on the couch while Bruce studies, and when he wakes up a couple of hours later, he seems to be doing better.


	22. Pool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there's any warning for this chapter, but if there is something I should warn for let me know!
> 
> Also I'm at 50 000 words for this story, which is a really big deal to me! I really want to say thank you to everyone who reads this and comments on this, I'm so grateful for your support!

Tony moves from the couch to the bedroom later in the night, but from what Bruce can hear through the open door, he mainly tosses and turns and doesn’t get much sleep. Bruce himself does drift off for a while, and wakes up to Tony lying on the couch with him, watching TV with the sound off, his head in Bruce’s lap.

In the morning, he’s doing much better than he was yesterday, but he’s still quiet, still has that quality to him that makes him look so much younger. That leaves Bruce feeling worried and uncomfortable and a little bit protective.

Bruce takes a quick shower and gets dressed while Tony cuts up some of the cantaloupe from yesterday. They eat it as breakfast, with lots of coffee and a cigarette each to go with it. Then it’s Tony’s turn to go shower while Bruce smokes some more cigarettes and prepares for his noon lecture. He leaves the window open even when he’s done smoking. It’s pleasantly warm outside.

‘Hey,’ Tony says, poking his head out of his bedroom. Tony’s shower lasted almost half an hour. Bruce can’t help worrying about how much water Tony must be wasting, even though he knows Tony can easily afford it. ‘Do you know where my black hoodie is?’

‘Oh, I, um, I –‘ Bruce can feel his face growing hot. ‘I think it’s at my apartment. I was wearing it the day before yesterday when I left here, right? I’m sorry.’

Tony nods. ‘Don’t worry about it. I have other clothes.’ He disappears back into his bedroom, but is back after only a couple of seconds. ‘Wait. Do you wear a lot of my clothes?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘Sometimes I borrow stuff. I thought you knew.’ He gets up, feeling hot and cold at the same time, his stomach filled with stones. ‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.’

‘No, you – it’s – you wear my clothes?’

‘I’m sorry, I swear. I didn’t do it a lot. I’ll stop.’ He knows he’s going all still and calm, trying not to look defiant, not to do anything that would provoke an attack.

‘No, no, I like that you wear my clothes. I just – never noticed.’

‘Maybe that means you have too many clothes,’ he says dryly, slipping into autopilot because his brain is still trying to figure out if he’s safe or not.

‘Probably. Does that mean that you leave stuff of yours here, too? Because I might have accidentally stolen some of your stuff. It looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t remember buying it.’

‘You definitely have too many clothes.’

‘But if I wear stuff of yours, it’s okay?’

Bruce just nods. The thought makes him feel weirdly warm.

He gets up while Tony disappears back into his room. ‘I’m going to my lecture,’ he says.

‘Are you coming back here after?’, Tony asks and he comes back to stand in the doorway, watching Bruce gather his stuff and put on his shoes.

‘Maybe in the evening. I want to study.’

‘You can study here.’

‘But I can also study at my own apartment.’

‘There’s no blowjobs at your apartment, though.’

Bruce sighs. ‘I’ll see you later, okay?’

Tony just nods and goes back into his room without saying bye.

The lecture is nice. It doesn’t require any social interaction or scary stuff like that. The weekend has been fun, but being around people so much has been stressful, not only because human interaction always stresses Bruce out, but also because being around other people confronts him with how fucked up he really is. He’s pretty much just a heap of trauma and social ineptitude, barely adjusted to living with himself, not at all adjusted to living with other people. Even Clint and Tony, who have both been through stuff, can at least be open and somewhat emotionally available. They can both stand to be touched.

His psychiatrist would say he knows better than that, comparing himself to other people. But he should, right? No one else is ever gonna judge him as one person. He’s going to be judged in comparison to other people – more normal than this person, much weirder than that one… Everyone, from people on the bus to fellow students to professors to future employers are going to compare him to the people they’ve met before him. He should at least consider how he compares to these people, right?

Tony texts to ask if Bruce can come over. Apparently Tony’s friends have decided it’s hot enough to use Tony’s pool. Bruce texts him that he’ll come after class. There’s a bus he can take that’s reasonably close to the mansion. 

Betty calls him after the lecture, when he’s already on his way to the bus stop. They know each other’s class schedules. It’s something she insists on even now that they talk less and less.

Talking to her is easy. When he sees her name on the screen of his phone, his heart always skips a beat, but when he hears the smile in her voice as she greets him, he feels calm, calmer than usual when talking to someone. He doesn’t worry about everything he’s going to say, then kick himself for saying it like an idiot. With her he just talks, leaves the thinking for another time.

When Betty calls, it usually means there’s stuff she’s struggling with and she’s trying to distract herself from it.

When they went out, he used to let her distract herself. He wouldn’t want her trying to make him face his own shit, so he didn’t make her face her shit, either. But that has always been the most important reason why they didn’t work. They never talked about stuff that bothered them. Bruce never wanted to mention that he sometimes hated touch, Betty never said how difficult it was for her when he stopped touching her for weeks. They never had fights (they had discussions about physics and anchovies on pizza and politics, never about each other). 

He’s been trying to get better at that, not bottling things up, not letting her bottle things up. He doesn’t think that even if they ever get over their emotional constipation, they’d be able to be together again, but it will definitely improve their friendship.

So once they’ve made the kind of small talk they always make after it’s been a while – how is school, health, mental health and family – he tries to figure out what could be upsetting her.

So he asks, ‘Has your mom been in town?’ and it must be bad this time, because that one question is enough. 

Bruce gets on the bus, scans his pass, takes a seat somewhere in the middle. 

There’s a quiet sound at the other end of the line. Not a sob, but a sound of sadness. ‘It’s so stupid,’ she says. ‘That she can still have this, this _power_ over me. She always makes me feel so stupid.’ Her voice is steady. It’s something he’s always envied about Betty, her composure, even when she’s crumbling on the inside. ‘She didn’t even say anything shitty, just – gave me that look. She did this whole explanation that was half physics, half crazy mathematics I’ve never heard of. And I don’t get any of it and she just gives me this look like she wishes I never came out of her.’

‘She gives me that look, too, and I never came out of her,’ he says.

From the phone comes a huff, halfway to a chuckle.

‘I’ve told you this before, right? About what she said to me when we were dating?’, Bruce starts.

A deep breath, a hopeful one. ‘Tell it again.’

‘She came to my apartment, which was sort of creepy because I didn’t know she knew where I lived and you’d only introduced me to her the day before. We had tea together. She in my desk chair and I on my bed and she told me about you. About how she regrets that you and her don’t get along better. She told me that she never managed to treat you like a child. She treated you like who she wanted you to be, a tiny little adult. And she knows she did that wrong, and that’s easy to admit to strangers, but it’s not easy to admit to you. And she has no idea how to change it, she doesn’t have a second chance, so she wants me to do you right. To treat you like you.’

He’s told her this same story time after time. He’s never changed a thing about it. That’s exactly how he remembers her mother saying it. They had talked about other stuff, too, mostly the courses he was taking. He’s pretty sure she wanted to see if he’d be able to keep up with Betty.

He understands why she needs this, over and over. He’s sure if someone could tell him about something nice his father said about him, he’d want to hear it, too, no matter how little it should matter. Betty’s mother isn’t nearly as bad as Bruce’s father, but she’s still been unfair, neglectful, emotionally abusive. She doesn’t deserve how much Betty cares about her opinion. That doesn’t mean Betty doesn’t care.

‘I told her that I love you… more than I’ve ever loved anybody, I think.’ There’s his mother, but he’s only known her for four years of his life. As much as he loves her, she’s a memory, a romanticised image that he never experienced. ‘And that made her laugh, because she feels that way about you, too. She didn’t marry your dad because she loved him. She married him because she loves her work, and he could give her access she couldn’t get from anyone else. She loved her work and nothing else. And then there was you. And she still loves her work, but it’s nothing compared to the way she loves you.’

A sniffle, one that has a smile inside of it. ‘You’re doing okay, too, right?’

He gets up and off the bus once it reaches the right stop. Instead of starting to walk to the mansion, he sits on the bench at the bus stop.

‘Yeah.’ This would be the moment to tell her about Tony, but he doesn’t know what to say. That he has a friend? A fuckbuddy? Some weird type of boyfriend? ‘I’m doing better than usual.’

‘I’m so happy to hear that, Bruce. We’re gonna do brunch, soon, okay? Sometime next week?’

‘Yeah, let’s do next week.’ The last time they’ve seen each other face to face for more than a couple of minutes has been months. Betty’s schedule is chaotic even on the best of days, which means intense homemade brunches aren’t a thing that fit into her day often. He’s sure it will happen someday, but he’s not so sure it will be next week.

‘I gotta go. Bye, Bruce. Thank you.’

‘Bye, Betty.’

The call ends and Bruce puts away his phone. He gets up from the bench at the bus stop and starts walking towards the mansion. It’s a twenty minute walk, but the sun is good company today.

Dex lets him in, and the walk through the house to the garden almost seems longer than the walk to the mansion.

From the relative cold and dark of the house, the garden outside seems almost fluorescent, dotted with people.

The pool is large and round, the tiles around it a dull orange that’s not pretty but still pleasant to look at. It all looks like it was designed in the seventies, which it possibly was. Nat is in a bikini, the guys in swimming trunks. James is wearing a black T-shirt and shorts, napping in a deck chair like he’s been there for a while.

Clint and Steve are wrestling in the water. Thor manages to get the thing they were wrestling over, a football, from them, and then it’s Steve and Clint against Thor, or all three against each other, it isn’t entirely clear. Either way, water splashes all the way to James’ spot, although he doesn’t notice.

Tony and Natasha are at the edge of the pool with martinis and don’t seem to mind the splash of water.

Bruce feels incredibly awkward in jeans and a long sleeved shirt (it’s made out of a thin material and it’s a very light grey, so really it’s not any warmer than a T-shirt would be, but people still complain about the long sleeves). None of them say a thing, though. They greet him, ask him if he wants to get in the water and don’t complain when he politely declines.

Tony beckons him to his spot with Natasha so Bruce sits down behind them. They both turn so they can look at him, but still keep their feet in the pool. Natasha gives him a smile. She’s wearing sunglasses that are oval and tinted red, but that somehow look like a deliberate fashion choice instead of something horribly out of style.

Tony is wearing sunglasses, too, black ones you can’t see his eyes through, and Bruce doesn’t like it. It reminds him of one of the first times him and Tony were around each other. When Tony was grieving Jarvis and trying not to let Bruce notice. Sunglasses on Tony just make Bruce worried he’s missing something, that he hasn’t caught some expression or some behaviour that normal people would immediately recognise. That he’s not good enough, not observant enough to make sure Tony is okay.

‘Hey,’ Bruce says. He reaches up, gently taking the sunglasses off Tony’s face. They’re sitting in the sun, but shadow from an awning on the façade of the house coats the upper part of Tony’s face in shade. ‘Wearing these out of the sun is gonna make your eyes tire.’

‘Okay, Steve-o,’ Tony mumbles, but he doesn’t put the sunglasses back on. Bruce still feels weirdly uncomfortable about it, but tries to distract himself by watching Clint, Steve and Thor’s tussle.

Tony offers him a sip of his martini and leaves the glass between him and Bruce even after that, like an open offer Bruce takes him up on a couple of times.

Tony grabs Bruce’s hand, looking at Bruce tentatively, so Bruce sticks out three fingers. Tony’s fingers curl around his wrist in a soft caress, something scary and gentle and sweet.

Everything is quiet except for the water and a curse from the guys here and there.

Tony is watching Bruce. Bruce is watching Tony watch him. Natasha has her eyes closed, leaned back in the sun with a faint smile on her face. At some point, Clint joins them at the edge of the pool. Steve crawls out of the water, shakes out his hair like a dog and then lies down beside James in the pool chair, or on James, more accurately, since the pool chair isn’t wide enough for the both of them.

James wakes up and calls Steve a ‘shit dawg’, but Steve just cuddles up to him, gives him an innocent look and kisses his chest, which is apparently enough for James to forgive him and go back to sleep.

Thor stays in the pool, floating on his back with his hands behind his head, skin glistening like he’s in a cologne commercial.

Tony is still touching Bruce’s hand, not really holding it as much as he’s toying with Bruce’s fingers. Bruce knows that the others notice, that this is probably going to make money change hands in some bet or another. He tries not to think about it too much.

As long as Tony keeps playing with his hand, though, he’s going to be thinking about it, so he presses his forehead to their intertwined hands for a moment, then pulls away and moves to lie in the grass. The tiles only end a couple of feet away from the edge of the pool, so it’s not like he’s far away at all.

He loves days like this, where nothing happens and nothing has to happen. Where you don’t have to feel guilty about not getting anything done because no one is getting anything done.

Betty and him had days like this, where the only thing they would accomplish all day was make some type of cookie Betty picked out on Instagram and the rest of the day would be spent lying in the sun with an open book lying forgotten on their chest, the radio on in the kitchen, the cleaner humming along.

Things stay like this until the sun starts to go down.

Thor comes out of the pool and lies down in the grass as well. Close enough to Bruce for them to talk about music. Clint and Natasha do a swimming competition, although the pool isn’t the ideal shape for it. They follow it up with a competition for who can stay underwater for longer that takes ages. Tony judges, but Steve keeps an eyes out, too, from where his head is resting on Bucky’s chest. It’s another angle from which he could spot Clint cheating.

Thor turns over on his back, trying to get more of a tan, and it’s just fucking unfair because he has the shoulders of a god and Bruce wants to stare at them for hours. They keep up their conversation, fragmented as it is through pleasant silences. They’re not talking about anything that matters, but it’s good anyway. Bonding.

Tony comes to sit by Bruce, without touching him this time, and they talk about school with Thor.

Steve gets up from his spot on top of Bucky when the sky starts to turn orange, the sun low on the horizon. ‘Can we go up to the roof?’, he says. ‘To see the sunset.’

Everyone is up in seconds. They’re quiet as they move through the empty house, up three floors to the roof, which is decorated with a large potted plant here and there and has patio furniture on the very west side of it. Steve goes to sit on the railing, but the rest of them sit down in the chairs behind him.

Tony shares a loveseat with Bruce, although he doesn’t touch him. 

The sun sets fast, or really it did most of the setting while they were still lying around the pool. The colours are bright, orange and pink that crawl across the sky and fade into a dark blue in the span of fifteen minutes. Bruce almost misses it because Tony and him are grinning at each other, he doesn’t even know about what.

Clint leans over the back of the loveseat to hug Tony’s shoulders from behind. Natasha gives both him and Bruce a kiss on the cheek, then a minute later, so does Thor. Steve and James spend a moment murmuring to each other at the edge of the roof, but then they come to say goodbye, too. Tony and Bruce get up to watch at the front of the roof until the others walk out of the front door. They wave at them and Tony and Clint yell about something inappropriate. They watch their cars leave and soon enough they’re on their own.


	23. Shower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I'm still not happy with this chapter after trying to figure it out for the last two months (sorry), but I'm just going to post it, because it's pretty okay and done is better than perfect. I hope you all enjoy this and thanks so much for reading! Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long!
> 
> Warning for this chapter for a (vague) discussion of and abusive relationship and them watching a video of Tony having sex with somone other than Bruce.

Tony turns around, leaning back against the railing around the roof. ‘We could sleep up here. I have, like, thermal mats and sleeping bags and stuff. And this early in the year the mosquitoes can’t be too bad, right?’

‘Why do you have thermal mats?’, Bruce asks, still leaned against the railing, but turning his head to look at Tony.

‘Steve mentioned once that he wanted to go camping.’

‘Did you actually go camping?’

‘No, but if we ever do, I’m ready.’

Bruce stares out at the dark front lawn. ‘Did I ever tell you that I wanted to fuck you on that planter? Like, did I say that out loud?’

‘I’m pretty sure you did. Do you stand by that statement?’

‘Yes. Would you actually like that?’

‘Fuck yes I would. That would be the hottest thing to happen to me since that time you rimmed me.’

Bruce smiles, weirdly proud that Tony found that hot at all. ‘Do you want to get drunk?’, he asks, looking aside at Tony.

Tony grins. ‘Of course I want to get drunk, who do you think I am?’

They make their way downstairs. Tony leads him to a part of the house he’s never been to, the furniture fitting in with the classical old money vibe of the rest of the house, but darker, reds and browns instead of beiges and blues. The large windows just look like black panes now that it’s dark. Tony leads him to a wide bar and crouches down behind it, shuffling through bottles. ‘We’re not gonna fuck tonight, are we?’

‘Nope,’ Bruce says.

‘So it’s okay if we drink stuff that smells like dad,’ he says, mostly to himself. Eventually he comes up with a pretty crystal decanter full of scotch. ‘This is really, really expensive and really, really good. Want some?’

Bruce nods. Tony gets two glasses and the crystal bottle and carries them to the sitting area beyond the bar. It has a flat screen TV and leather couches and a pile of blankets he’s sure Tony put there at some point. There’s a large wooden dining table further into the room and a bunch of pictures of the wall. All Bruce can see from this far is that they have lots of green in them.

Tony sets the glasses down on the coffee table and pours them two fingers each. They sit, sip their drinks. Tony props his feet up on the coffee table, then twists on the couch, tucking his legs underneath himself, grabbing the remote and turning on the TV.

Despite the loudness of it, he asks, ‘Do you want to keep us, like, what we have, from our friends?’

He can’t figure out the expression on Tony’s face, can’t tell if he’s hoping Bruce wants to be open to their friends or not. So he stares at his glass, takes another sip, stares at it some more. ‘Technically there’s nothing to know about, right. We aren’t “together”.’

‘Yeah but we… We fuck around, right? Do you want to keep that a secret?’

‘I think they already know.’

‘You know what I mean, like, do you mind if I touch you in front of them or would you prefer if we pretend we’re all platonic?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘I’m fine either way.’

‘Then why did you pull away? Back at the pool this afternoon.’

‘Because… I-it stresses me out that they, you know – that they’re going to think of us as a couple or friends with benefits or whatever and have all these expectations as to how we should treat each other. But I – I know that’s just dumb.’

‘It’s not that dumb.’

They’re quiet for a while, just drink. Tony pours them both some more, though their glasses aren’t completely empty, yet.

‘We could watch porn,’ he says then.

‘Why would we watch porn?’

‘It could be useful, to, like, learn what we both like. And honestly I’m just curious about what you get off on.’

‘You know what I get off on.’

Tony frowns like he doesn’t.

‘You.’

‘Do you think of me while you jerk off?’

‘I don’t do that a lot.’

‘What about before we started fucking?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘Still didn’t do it a lot.’

‘When you do, do you watch porn?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘What porn?’

He shrugs. ‘Mostly amateur stuff. Scripted porn is so weird. I don’t really pick and choose, just see what’s there.’

‘Come on. There’s gotta be more to it than that.’

He shrugs. ‘I don’t think there is.’

‘Come on,’

Tony gets up to grab his laptop from the table at the other side of the room. Bruce is sort of surprised it’s there, that Tony apparently actually hangs out in this part of the house. It seemed to Bruce like this part would be where Tony’s father was most.

Tony syncs his laptop with the TV in front of them.

‘Gay, lesbian or straight?’, he asks.

Bruce shrugs.

‘Do you watch, like, solo stuff or couples or group things?’

Bruce shrugs again. ‘You’re really overestimating the amount of time I spend browsing porn.’

‘So you just watch whatever?’

‘Yeah.’ Bruce watches on the TV how Tony goes to Pornhub on his browser and clicks the first video that comes up, some shitty video that has both ‘teen’ and ‘sister’ in the title. 

He knows Tony is looking at him as the video starts playing full screen on the TV. There’s barely any storyline to it, after only a minute all he can hear over the surround-sound system are breathy moans.

Bruce sighs, watches the woman on the screen suck her “brother’s” cock with a strange sort of detachment.

‘You’re not even hard, Bruce,’ Tony says.

‘Yeah, I’m not gonna jerk off in front of you.’

‘Can I try to find something that gets you hard?’

Bruce shrugs, sips his drink. ‘If that’s what you want to do.’

‘Is it what you wanna do?’

Bruce sighs. ‘I don’t want to talk all night about how I don’t watch porn like a normal person or whatever.’

Tony snorts. ‘I’m not expecting you to be a normal person. Look,’ he types something into the search bar, ‘golden shower’. To Bruce’s surprise, the search comes up empty.

‘I designed a program that filters out anything that could trigger me. Don’t tell me you don’t watch porn like a normal person until you’ve written 6000 lines of code with your dick out.’

‘6000? That sounds like a lot for a filter.’

‘They don’t always tag everything that happens in a video, so I had to figure out a way to scan comments and the videos themselves for content and label it.’ 

In that case 6000 sounds like impressively little.

‘Holy shit, Tony.’

‘Yeah. I’m sure my dad’s real proud that I’m using my genius for watching porn.’

He types in ‘rough sex’ next, picking out one of the videos and watching Bruce’s reaction as it plays, he skips ahead to the actual fucking, then gets impatient with that and clicks another video, staying in the rough category. Next he searches for blowjobs, this time in the gay section of the website.

He doesn’t really stick with any video long enough for Bruce to get into it even if he’d want to, trying different search words, mostly relating to stuff the two of them have done before.

Then Tony puts on another video, this time from a file on his laptop. Bruce recognises the moans before the video even focuses and turns to Tony, frowning.

‘Just watch,’ Tony says.

On screen Tony’s there, too, smiling up at the camera. It’s a phone camera, portrait mode so that Bruce can see Tony’s face, but also his stomach muscles working, a cock sliding in and out of his ass teasingly. A quiet grunt from the person behind the camera when he bottoms out. Tony moaning and arching his back, eyes hooded as he keeps them on the camera, or on the person filming. He moans again when the person thrusts into him, building up a rhythm while Tony squeezes his eyes shut and pinches his own nipples. The guy filming slaps Tony, not too hard. ‘Eyes on me,’ he says and Tony’s eyes open again. 

‘Sorry,’ Tony murmurs, grinning, still playing with his nipples.

The guy pushes two fingers into Tony’s mouth and Tony sucks them, moaning around them while the guy keeps fucking him.

Eventually he starts to jerk Tony’s cock in time with his own thrusts and Tony only comes a couple of minutes after the guy finishes. The Tony on screen is starting to sit up when the frame freezes.

‘You’re hard,’ Tony says.

‘No shit,’ Bruce manages. For a second he hates Tony for showing him the video, because this must be one of Tony’s abusive exes and Bruce hates that that turned him on, watching Tony be fucked by someone who hurt him so much. 

‘I guess I just like stuff that’s real,’ he says. He doesn’t want to think about it, about how hot Tony looked, while Tony right here, right now on the couch beside him looked reluctant, guarded. ‘Here,’ He takes the laptop from Tony, types a username into the Pornhub search engine, clicks the first video that comes up. ‘This is the kind of stuff I watch.’ It’s a woman who mostly makes masturbation videos, shitty music on in the background, sometimes a TV show. Her moans are quiet and breathy, not exaggerated and when she comes, her muscles spasm and she makes this choked of groaning sound that turns Bruce on like crazy.

Tony quietly bookmarks her page. ‘Now I’m hard,’ he says when the video is done.

‘Why did you show me that video of you?’

‘Because I was trying to get you hard.’

‘But were you actually comfortable showing that?’

Tony shrugs. ‘You liked it, right?’

‘That’s not what I’m asking.’

Tony is quiet for a long time. ‘It’s a video I’m okay with, right? I really like it and I’m not uncomfortable with it and I don’t mind you seeing it, it’s just that there’s all this stuff surrounding it that I can’t shake. This was when I had only been with Tiberius for a couple of weeks and nothing bad had happened yet. But I know what happened after, you know? I know that it wasn’t always like this. And I hate that. There’s so much shit I love that I can’t do anymore because he ruined it for me.’

He's quiet for a moment. ‘But I actually like showing this to you, even if it makes me feel sort of gross. Because he tries to blackmail me with shit like this, but that’s useless if everyone who matters already knows about it.’

Bruce’s cock is softening again now that nothing is happening. Discussion of Tony being abused really helps the process. ‘Can I touch you?’, he asks.

Tony seems surprised. ‘Yeah, of course. But I sort of want to shower first, if that’s alright?’

Bruce nods and Tony grabs his hand to lead him to a bathroom, not the same one as last time. This one has a shower with jets in the sides of the wall and LED lights along the corners. 

Tony starts to take off his clothes while Bruce takes a seat on the closed toilet. Tony glances back at him. ‘You could come in with me. We can turn off the lights.’

Bruce shakes his head. The thought of Tony touching his scars, even in the dark where he can’t see them, makes him feel nervous and uncomfortable and gross.

‘Oh,’ Tony says. ‘I have a T-shirts in here. He opens a drawer beside the sink and pulls out a black T-shirt, probably a size smaller than the ones Bruce usually wears. Again, Bruce is surprised that there’s stuff that belongs to Tony in this part of the house. ‘You could wear it in the shower?’

The thought of being in the shower with Tony with the shirt on makes him much less uncomfortable, so he nods. Tony hands him the shirt and turns away from Bruce while taking off the rest of his clothes.

Bruce changes out of his long-sleeved shirt and into the short-sleeved one. He takes off his pants, but keeps his boxers on. Once he tells Tony it’s okay for him to turn around, Tony gives him a grin.

He turns on the shower, makes sure the temperature is alright and turns on the LEDs. Bruce turns off the main light.

The LEDs are a soft blue. Tony looks divine in the glow of them. He steps under the spray of the shower and Bruce just watches him from the other side of the room, mesmerised by the softness the shadows give to Tony, the way the faint light catches on his cheeks and his shoulders.

Then he takes off his glasses, puts them by the sink and steps under the shower with Tony. The shower is spacious, but Bruce stands close to Tony, puts a hand on his hip. Tony smiles, but it’s not a happy smile. He keeps his eyes on Bruce’s T-shirt, which is quickly soaking through.

He chuckles. ‘I’m not used to feeling like shit in the shower with someone else there.’

He takes a loofah out of the shower basket, but allows Bruce to take it from him. Bruce adds soap, rubs it in his hand to build up a lather, than slides it over Tony’s skin, gently but firmly. Tony stays still, his only movement lifting his arms out of the way.

He’s thorough, making sure to scrub every part of Tony long enough for Tony to feel clean. He slides the loofah between Tony’s ass cheeks, all the way to the spot behind his balls, makes sure the area is clean and then makes sure all the soap is rinsed away.

‘My mouth,’ Tony says. And so Bruce thoroughly cleans Tony’s lips, trying not to get any foam in his nose. He kneels down to clean Tony’s legs and feet, then sets to work on shampooing his hair. It’s not just any shampoo, it’s one that Tony actually smells like a lot of the time, which confirms again that Tony spends actual time in this part of the house.

When he’s rinsing out the shampoo, Tony speaks. ‘Can I kiss you?’ His voice is quiet and vulnerable, his eyes closed as he stands under the spray of the shower.

Bruce doesn’t answer, just leans in, trying not to overthink it. He doesn’t let the kiss go anywhere, puts a hand on Tony’s chest when he tries to lean in farther and deepen the kiss. He lets the kiss go on, tries to keep his mind blank. Tony’s hands are on his hips, his thumbs stroking under the weighed down fabric of Bruce’s T-shirt, over his hipbones. There’s a scar just above his right hip, one that’s stretched out and weird from how much he’s grown since he got it. He pulls away as soon as Tony touches it, stepping back until Tony is out of his space. Tony opens his eyes, watching Bruce, but doesn’t comment. He takes the bottle of conditioner out of the shower basket and turns around. 

‘I won’t turn until you tell me I can. There’s dry underwear in the top drawer next to the sink.’

Bruce undresses quickly, trying to ignore the mirror. It’s so wide that it’s hard to stand anywhere without seeing his own reflection, although the faint blue LEDs smoothen out his skin, make the scars less visible. He drops his wet clothes in a pile, grabs a towel from a shelf over the drawers, towels himself dry quickly and puts on Tony’s ridiculously soft underwear, then his own jeans and sweatshirt. ‘You can turn around,’ Bruce says to Tony, who is rinsing the conditioner out of his hair.

He turns off the shower and steps out. Bruce gets a towel, pulls it away from Tony when he tries to take it from him, dries him off gently. Tony is looking at Bruce’s face, but he tries to ignore it.

‘Blonksy is coming over tomorrow,’ he says. 

‘Oh. He’s the, uh, friend from your childhood, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Once Bruce is done, Tony gets clothing from the drawers and dresses in a threadbare T-shit, leggings and a woollen cardigan that looks awfully comfortable. ‘How do you know each other?’

‘We lived on the same street. And my dad was abusive and his parents were, too, so we started to help each other out when we could. We didn’t really like each other at all, but we needed each other. No one else knew about the abuse.’

‘Why do you still see him, then, if you don’t like each other?’

‘Because we… sometimes we still need each other.’ He’s quiet for a moment, but knows he needs to elaborate to help Tony understand. ‘We see each other on the anniversary of each of our parents’ deaths.’

‘Who, um. Who is it tomorrow?’

‘Blonksy’s mom.’

‘Has she been dead for long?’

‘A couple of years.’

‘And both your parents are dead, too?’

Bruce nods. It doesn’t hurt anymore to talk about it. ‘My mom died when I was four. My dad died when I was sixteen.’

Tony takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I’m so sorry, Bruce.’

Bruce just gives him a smile, pecks him on the lips. Tony seems surprised, but doesn’t say anything.

Bruce takes Tony’s hand and pulls him out of the bathroom, back to the TV room/dining room/bar where they watched porn only half an hour ago. They go back to the bar for more scotch.

To his surprise, Tony sits down once his glass is full, right behind the bar.

Bruce sits, too. It’s weird, a perspective he isn’t used to seeing from. There’s a shelf with a bunch of cocktail shakers, another that just has a model airplane and a box of condoms. The amount of booze stocked here could probably pay Bruce’s water bill for the whole year.

‘I used to hide here all the time when I was a kid,’ Tony says. He laughs. ‘Most of the time I spent with my dad I was hiding from him. He always made me leave if he knew I was there. When he was here it was mostly to have friends over, business partners and army contacts and stuff. A couple of times, he took women up here, cheated on mom. Well –‘ he chuckles again. ‘I’m sure it happened more than a couple of times, but I was only there for it those few times.’

‘That’s fucked up.’

Tony shrugs. ‘It was sort of comforting, hearing him be nice to someone for a change. I was always insanely jealous of the women he fucked. That was before I realised that sex isn’t a type of affection you can have with just anyone. I though he was just tickling them.’

His hand hovers over Bruce’s knee. Bruce nods and Tony touches him, strokes his thigh, the inside of his knee.

‘Hey,’ he says, smiling, reaching up with his other hand for a box balanced on top of a couple of bottles, like someone just tossed it under the bar without care. He lets go off Bruce to lift the lid of the box, revealing expensive-looking chocolates. Some of them are covered in gold leaf. ‘These are so good,’ Tony says. He sets the open box down beside them, picks out a chocolate that has a red pattern in it somehow and gets back to touching Bruce’s leg once he’s popped the chocolate into his mouth. Bruce lifts the box to see on the bottom which chocolate has what kind of filling. He takes one with walnuts while Tony’s hand goes up to his hip, massaging the outside of his thigh and ass on the way.

Bruce wants to return the favour. He isn’t feeling all that bad about touch right now, so he should give to Tony what he can. He scoots a little closer, pulls Tony’s legs over his. He slides his hands over Tony’s abdomen, slips them under his shirt, squeezes his hips.

Tony slides a hand into Bruce’s hair, presses their foreheads together and they stay like that, Bruce’s hands firm on Tony’s bare skin, Tony’s fingers knotted in Bruce’s hair.

‘Do you…’

Tony trails off. Bruce waits for him to go on, but he doesn’t. ‘Do I what?’

‘No, never mind,’ He lets go of Bruce’s hair, sits up slightly. ‘It’s, um, it’s a really unfair question I was going to ask.’

‘Unfair how?’

‘Just not – I don’t know. I shouldn’t ask it.’

‘You can ask it if you want. I’m not gonna, like, punish you for it.’

‘It’s not that. It would just be mean.’

Bruce slides his hands up higher, over Tony’s ribs. ‘Just ask. I won’t answer if it’s a shitty question.’ 

Tony is quiet for a long time. ‘Do you think – are you ever gonna be able to take off your shirt around me?’

‘Oh.’

Tony doesn’t say anything else, stares at Bruce’s hands, which have gone very still over his abdomen, just like the rest of him.

Bruce doesn’t say anything.

‘Because… this, what we have, isn’t going to end anytime soon, right? And I know it’s gonna take time, but I was just wondering if that’s how you see it, too. If you think it’s going to take time or if it’s just never gonna happen.’

Bruce still doesn’t say anything. His mind is racing, but he can’t come up with an answer.

‘How about with Betty? How long did it take with her?’

Bruce wants to laugh. Or maybe he wants to cry. ‘I never really –‘ He’s aware that his voice sounds strange, but there’s nothing he can do about it. ‘One time my shirt rode up while we were fucking and she saw my stomach. Technically it wasn’t because of that, but we broke up for two weeks after that. I showed her my back once, but that didn’t go well, either. I got really, really drunk after. I was hungover for like two days. I was okay with her seeing my legs and arms, but we never really got further than that.’

‘How long were you two together?’

‘Two years, in total.’

Tony lets out a shaky breath.

‘Is there anyone that you’re okay with seeing under your shirt?’

‘Blonsky,’ Bruce admits. ‘But he’s seen me naked for years. He’s seen me with barely any scars at all.’

‘Did you and him fuck?’

‘Yeah. A lot.’

‘But you don’t anymore?’

‘He’s got a boyfriend and we’re exclusive right?’

Tony gives him a smile, though it’s quick to fade. ‘So you don’t think you’ll ever – like, that’s not something we should even try?’

‘Taking off my shirt around you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t know. I want to think that – at some point I want to be okay with it, but I don’t think – not soon. I want to try but, not soon, not now.’

Tony nods, eyes cast down.

Bruce pulls him closer, lies down on the wooden floor and Tony follows, lying down against his chest. Bruce’s hands stay under his shirt, stroking over Tony’s back now and Tony kisses his upper arm, scratches down his side, at the sensitive skin below his armpit, the inside of his elbow, making Bruce shudder. It’s a combination of being in a good headspace and being slightly drunk that make him enjoy the touches instead of wanting to get away from them.

Bruce is pretty sure they’re down there for at least an hour, but neither of them falls asleep.

‘What time is it?’, Bruce asks.

Tony fishes his phone out of his pocket, raises it to eye level. ‘Four thirty. You ever watch, like, dumb videos on Youtube?’

Bruce shakes his head.

‘Do you want to?’

Bruce nods, and so they relocate to the couch, were Tony uses his laptop to play random videos, anything from vine compilations to messy, hyperactive people doing house tours. Bruce is too tired and buzzed to follow most of it, but it’s still pretty entertaining, especially the parts that make Tony snort.

Tony sets the laptop on the coffee table and changes his position on the couch every five minutes, first leaning against the side of the couch, then sitting closer to Bruce, then resting his head in Bruce’s lap, then sitting back up again until eventually Bruce pulls him into the V of his legs and slips his hands under Tony’s shirt again.

He seems more relaxed now that Bruce is touching him again and leans back, twisting his head to nuzzle Bruce’s cheek. 

Bruce lets him and can’t help but smile.


	24. Maria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still alive! Thank you for sticking with me!
> 
> This chapter is tiny, but I've posted the next one, too and that one is way longer.

Tony falls asleep by eight, right after Bruce insists they move to a bed so that Tony doesn’t ruin his back sleeping on the couch in the living room, which is too expensive and beautiful to really be comfortable. He looks all peaceful and content, curled up on his side, face pushed into a pillow, blankets pulled up to his neck.

Bruce doesn’t kiss him before he leaves, but he wants to.

He goes into the garden first, lights a cigarette. He’s never really been to the garden until yesterday and he was surprised by how beautiful it is. Beyond the pool, it’s not just empty grass like he’d expect. There’s flowers and ponds, a rose garden up against the side of the house.

He only realises he isn’t alone halfway through his cigarette.

A short woman with black curly hair and a huge sun hat walks out from the house into the garden equipped with a bucket and pruning shears. She starts to make her way to the rose bushes when she notices him.

He assumes she’s a gardener and gives her an awkward smile, but instead of continuing to the roses, she makes her way towards him.

'Oh,' her voice is gentle and melodic. 'Hello.’ She looks around the garden. ‘Is Tony here, too?' 

'Yeah. He's asleep, um, upstairs.' 

'Good, if you ask me, he does too little of that. I'm Maria Stark.' She holds out her gloved hand and Bruce shakes it uncomfortably.

'Bruce Banner.' He can feel his cheeks growing hot.

To his surprise, she smiles. 'Tony told me about you! You're the Biology major, right?' 

'Yes.' 

'Do you want breakfast? I'll make a frittata.' 

'No, thank you, I - um,' He can’t think of anything normal to say, is racking his brain for how exactly Tony’s Boyfriend should behave in front of his mom, but his mind is blank. 'I have to go soon. You know, um.' He feels guilty. Tony told him their thing wasn't going to end anytime soon, but it should. Tony is going to be an embarrassment for his family if he stays with Bruce. 'Tony and I aren't anything serious, you know. We're more like school friends. I was just here to work on an assignment.'

'I know my son is bisexual, honey, so you’re not accidentally outing him, if that’s what you’re worried about.' 

He doesn't know what to say to that. It hadn’t even occurred to him that Tony’s family would mind his sexual preferences. What they will mind is him, poor and tainted and useless. What was he thinking? Tony is going to inherit an empire, for fuck’s sake, and Bruce thought he could, what? Just stick around until then? Hide from Tony’s family? 

'He'll find someone better than me,' he says and Mrs. Stark frowns, like she doesn't understand. 'Before he takes over the company and stuff. Someone, um, more appropriate.' 

'Oh, honey,' she says gently. 'Don't worry about that. You don't hurt him, you don't traumatize him. That makes you the most appropriate guy he's ever been with.' 

He’s quiet for a while. He doesn’t have to convince her. He’ll make sure, that Tony doesn’t get stuck with him, that he finds someone better. 'How do you know, that I don't hurt him?', he asks instead.

She’s not quite smiling anymore. 'He still tells me about you.' 

'What do you mean?' 

'When he was with Obediah, he kept it a secret from me until after they broke up. I knew about Tiberius, but Tony never told me anything. The first few weeks, he told me some things, about them having fun together, but after that, I didn't hear his name out of Tony's mouth until he told me they broke up. When he calls, he talks about you all the time. He was with Obediah for a year and with Tiberius for a little less than that and he's already talked more about you than he ever did about either of them.' 

'Oh.' He takes another drag from his cigarette with shaking hands, feeling like the movement takes up so much space, drags all attention to him, like he’s big and bulky and clumsy. Then he walks back to the door, where the ashtray is on a table with empty flowerpots on it and puts out his cigarette. He wishes he could be smaller.

He waits for Ms. Stark to tell him she'll fuck him up if he ever hurts Tony, but she doesn't. Instead she smiles and walks a couple of paces towards him. 'You're a lot like him, aren't you?' 

It's a surprise. He's always seen Tony as vastly different from himself. The idea of them having anything in common is outrageous. But maybe there are similarities. Compared to Tony's previous boyfriends, Bruce is pretty sure he's closer in age to Tony than either of them and they share a lot of interests, had shitty dads and nice moms, feel the same way about a lot of things, from the new Applied Mathematics TA to Edward Scissorhands. 

‘Does your family celebrate Easter, Bruce?’

He frowns, not sure why she’s asking, what the right answer is supposed to be. ‘Um, no.’

‘Would you like to celebrate it with us? It’s on the sixteenth of April this year.’

‘Oh, um, you don’t have to –‘

‘It’s mostly my side of the family who’ll be there. Howard isn’t a big fan of holidays. He’ll probably find an excuse not to come.’

‘Yeah, okay,’ he says when he isn’t able to think of a polite way to say no.

She smiles. ‘I’m glad to have you around, Bruce, okay? I can tell you’re really important to Tony.’

‘Okay,’ Bruce manages. ‘I have to go now. It was, um, nice meeting you.’

‘It was nice meeting you, too, Bruce. See you on Easter, yeah?’

His cheeks still feel hot when he gets to the front door, where he grabs the keys to the Audi and takes off to the airport.

Later, when Bruce is waiting for Blonksy at the airport, Tony texts him: _You’re coming to Easter! Great!!_ with a bunch of emoticons that just look like empty squares on Bruce's phone.

It doesn’t really make him feel any better about himself, but at least he feels a little lighter.


	25. Blonsky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big warning for self harm and implied & referenced child abuse in this chapter. The self harm is not too graphic, but it's still really fucked up, so if you need more info to make sure you'll be okay reading this, hit me up at hungryface.tumblr.com!
> 
> I unexpectedly loved writing Blonsky and this somehow turned out kind of fluffy at certain points? I hope you enjoy!

Blonsky is almost smiling when he sees Bruce, or at least the car Bruce is in. He has a toothpick between his teeth because he’s probably trying to quit smoking again and his entire face is freckled from being in the sun. He looks good. Better.

It’s always something Bruce has tried to avoid thinking about when it comes to Blonsky. They have different traumas, different personalities and coping mechanisms. It’s no surprise that they heal at a different pace. Bruce should be happy that Blonsky is doing so well, but it stings that he isn’t making the same kind of progress.

Bruce doesn’t help Blonsky with his bag or the car door. Blonsky’s left underarm has been gone for as long as Bruce has known him. Blonsky never told him how it happened, whether it was some kind of infection, or something his parents did to him, or if he was just born without it. Either way, Blonsky takes great pride in how well he can work with his prosthetic, which is cheap and mostly meant to make him look like he has a hand, without any of the functionality. He has an impressive amount of dexterity which comes from almost two decades of practice, and he doesn’t like being helped.

‘Banner, you win the lottery or somethin’?’, Blonsky asks when he sits down in the passenger seat of Tony’s fancy Audi.

‘It’s a friend’s.’

‘Oh, you got friends who borrow you their cars now?’ Blonsky sounds amused. He takes the toothpick out of his mouth, holds it between his fingers like a cigarette.

Bruce starts the car.

‘Guy or girl?’, Blonsky asks.

‘Guy.’

‘You fuckin’ ‘im?’

‘No.’

‘You want to?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘None of your business, Blonsky.’

Blonsky smiles. ‘’s good to see you, Banner.’ Blonsky is probably the only person who consistently calls Bruce by his last name. It’s a sign of respect, though, in Blonsky’s world. First names are the ones you parents chose for you. Blonsky doesn’t want to reduce people to the choices their parents made for them.

‘Good to see you, too,’ Bruce echoes. He means it. There’s something so comforting about being around Blonsky. Someone who knows everything there is to know about him and doesn’t reject him despite it.

‘You finally learned to eat? You’re not as skinny anymore,’ Blonksy notes, then.

Bruce has been noticing it, too. Tony has been getting him to eat much more often and much more regularly than he would on his own. He’s been steadily gaining weight. He was probably way too skinny to begin with, so he actually looks better now that he’s filling out, but he’s still not sure if he’s okay with this. It sort of feels like he’s less in control of his body, now that it’s changing. Like it’s less his own.

He just hums in answer to Blonsky.

‘Does it have something to do with that friend of yours?’

‘No.’

Blonsky is smiling, though, which means he knows Bruce is lying.

They stop at Bruce’s apartment. Blonsky gets his bag while Bruce opens the door. They’re quiet as Bruce rinses off two glasses in the sink and hands them to Blonsky, who fills them with the whiskey he brought. Neither of them actually likes the taste of whiskey. That’s sort of the point, though.

‘I can’t wait for this day to be over,’ Blonsky says. He sounds more tired now that he isn’t forcing himself to be cheerful anymore. He sighs and lifts his glass. ‘To my mother, may she burn in hell.’

Their glasses come together with a dull cling. ‘May she burn in hell,’ Bruce echoes quietly.

They drink in silence, Blonsky sitting on Bruce’s bed, Bruce on his desk chair.

‘Would you still fuck me?’, Blonsky asks when he’s halfway through his glass.

‘No.’

‘So it’s going well with the Audi guy?’

Bruce shrugs. ‘That’s maybe a little optimistic. I’m too fucked up for things to be going well. Are you still with the pilot?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is he doing okay?’

‘He is. Got a promotion last week.’

‘That’s nice.’

Blonsky nods. 

‘How do you do it with him?’

‘Do what?’

‘Have a relationship without fucking it up?’

‘I fuck up a lot, Banner. It’s inevitable for people like us. There’s a point pretty much every month at which I punch him in the face because my brain decides to think he’s my fucking dad.’

‘So how do you stay together?’

‘We talk about it, mostly. He knows my triggers, I tell him if something makes me uncomfortable or if I’m having a hard day. He tries to be patient, tries to avoid my triggers and stuff. He tells me when he’s struggling with doing that, or when he’s dealing with his own problems. So, yeah, transparency. Really helps.’

‘So you can just – let him touch you, and look and you and everything?’

‘It takes time, Banner, it takes so much fucking time, but yeah, mostly I can take it. I know he’s not them, he’s not forcing me. I know he stops if I tell him to.’

‘Do you take off your shirt around him? Have you shown him your scars?’

‘You haven’t shown yours to Audi guy, have you?’ Blonsky sounds sort of sad.

Bruce just shakes his head. There’s no point in lying.

‘Are you using the oil I gave you?’

‘It doesn’t work.’

‘It does, it just takes a while before you notice. Where is it?’ Blonsky gets up. He only needs to open two drawers before he finds the bottle of oil he gave Bruce the last time he came by. He’s only used it a couple of times before he got tired of putting time into his hopeless body.

‘Come on, take off your shirt,’ Blonsky says as he sits back on the bed, space for Bruce between his legs. Bruce does as he’s told, taking off his shirt and sitting on the bed between Blonsky’s legs, his back to Blonsky. He tries to remember how he feels as Blonsky rubs the oil into the scars Bruce can’t reach. Tries to remember it for when he’s with Tony. Maybe he can try to replicate this relaxation, this trust.

Blonsky is efficient and firm where he massages the oil into Bruce’s skin. Once he’s done, he hands the bottle to Bruce and Bruce takes care of the scars he can reach. After they sit like that, not moving, as the oil sinks into Bruce’s skin.

Eventually Bruce gets up to top up their glasses. He doesn’t plan on drinking a lot, but Blonsky definitely will.

They drink in silence. Bruce sits back in the desk chair and puts his shirt back on once his skin isn’t as oily anymore.

Blonsky tops up his glass before Bruce gets even halfway through his. He takes a big swig, then another, staring off into nothing like his mind is somewhere entirely else. 

‘Does your boyfriend know we do this?’, Bruce asks.

‘He knows what today is. He knows when the anniversary of my dad’s death is, too. And he knows I always spend them with you. Doesn’t know what we do, though I’m sure he has some idea.’ He takes another swig of his drink.

‘So he doesn’t know about last year, on my mom’s day?’ The anniversary if her death is usually his worst low every year, and he’s never really learned any other way to cope than to bury himself in Blonsky’s warmth. To pretend there’s something inside him that’s alive enough to live through this.

‘Oh no, I told him about that. But we were trying the whole open relationship thing back then.’

‘So he doesn’t mind that I sucked you off?’

Blonsky shakes his head. They’re quiet for a while. ‘When’s the last time you slept?’

Bruce doesn’t answer quickly enough. Blonsky gets up off the bed. ‘You should take a nap,’ he says. Bruce starts to protest, but Blonsky interrupts him. ‘It’s gonna be a long fucking day. Come on, you need to stay up with me tonight.’

So Bruce gets into the bed and Blonsky sits down on the floor beside him. He has the bottle of whiskey in his hand and takes a swig straight from the bottle before setting it down.

Their faces are only a foot apart. Blonsky really does look better, not as haunted, even on this horrible day. Bruce smiles.

Blonsky’s eyebrows twist downwards.

‘Come on, close your eyes and sleep.’

Bruce smiles. He’s still impatient. That hasn’t changed. Bruce closes his eyes.

‘You _are_ fucking the Audi guy, aren’t you? Has you in a good mood and everything.’

Bruce ignores him. When he feels like Blonsky is about to say something else, probably about how it’s good that he’s fucking Tony, he says, ‘I don’t wanna think about that right now.’

‘Why not?’

‘Stresses me out. I’m wrong for him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He’s all sweet and fuckin’ – like, pure and stuff. But he had a boyfriend who hurt him a lot and now he thinks that’s all he deserves, to be hurt. And so he wanted to fuck me because he thought I was going to hurt him maybe. And I didn’t, but I think maybe he’s just keeping me around because he figures I will at some point. Maybe he’s just waiting.’

‘Banner.’

‘What if he can tell?’

Blonsky doesn’t say anything.

‘What if I hurt him?’

‘You won’t.’

Bruce opens his eyes again to look at Blonsky, whose expression is devastated. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘You never hurt Betty,’ he says. ‘You were with her for two years and you’ve never done anything worse than bite her lip while kissing her. Why would this be different?’

Bruce sighs. ‘I’m older now.’ Sometimes, he feels like his hands look more and more like his dad’s every day.

‘You’re so full of shit, Banner. Do you think your dad was ever terrified at the thought of hurting his family? Fuck no. He was barely even ashamed. Someone as self-conscious as you isn’t going to end up like him.’

Bruce doesn’t say anything in return and closes his eyes again.

‘I want him to see my scars,’ he says then.

‘Fucking go to _sleep_.’

Bruce smiles slightly at Blonsky’s exasperation. It’s kind of fun to be annoying to someone without being afraid they’ll leave. ‘But I think if I show him my scars we’re gonna have to start from scratch again. I won’t trust him anymore. I’ll want to stop seeing him again like I did in the beginning.’

Blonsky doesn’t answer.

‘Sometimes I wish we were in love. That it could just be the two of us forever and I’d never have to open up to anyone else. That would be so much easier.’

There’s a silence.

‘Yeah,’ Blonsky says, to Bruce’s surprise. Normally he’d tell Bruce that opening up to people is worth the struggle, that they never would have worked out, anyway, that they’d have been a disaster together.

‘It’s weird not to fuck, isn’t it?’, Bruce asks to lighten the mood, to get rid of the sound of raw yearning that still hangs in the air.

Blonsky chuckles. ‘Yeah.’

‘Worth it, though, right? To be with the pilot, and everything?’

‘Yeah.’

This is when he decides not to tell Blonsky Tony’s name. There is a certain thrill to keeping things from Blonsky, who knows all there is to know about him, all except for Tony’s name.

‘My guy is worth it, too.’

Blonsky puts his hand over Bruce’s eyes. ‘Come on, now. I don’t get how you always get like this when you’re so tired. Don’t you want to sleep?’

Bruce shrugs, digging his shoulder into the mattress. ‘Are you any better?’ 

They both know Blonsky isn’t, and so Blonsky doesn’t say anything.

‘I like your accent,’ Bruce says instead, because he does. It sounds like home, but not like the bad parts, only the good parts. Bruce’s dad moved to Ohio from Michigan and doesn’t have much of an accent to speak off. Bruce doesn’t either, having never learned one from his dad. Blonsky does have the warm, rounded drawl his mom and his social worker and all the nurses and teachers and cashiers had. ‘You know that, right?’

‘You tell me that every time you hear me speak.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘But I know you’re thinking it. Now shut up and go to sleep.’

Bruce does shut up and eventually, he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, Blonsky is sitting at his desk, hunched over his laptop. There’s sun shining directly into the window, which means it’s long past noon.

'You're not working on your day off,’ Bruce says, voice a little hoarse.

Blonsky sits up, saves whatever he had been working on and closes his laptop. 'It's a therapy exercise. Does your radiator not work?' 

'I don't know. Did you turn it on?' 

'I tried. It's not doing anything.' 

'You can't turn on my radiator.' 

'What? I thought you weren't broke anymore?' 

'Not _as_ broke. But broke enough not use a radiator anymore in April.' 

'Shit, Bruce.' 

'Shut up. You've been there.' 

'Yeah, doesn't mean it doesn't suck.' 

'What was the therapy thing you were doing?' 

'I was writing a letter to my mom.' 

Bruce is quiet for a moment as he processes the full weight of that, of confronting someone who has done so much damage to you. 'Oh. How is it going?' 

Blonsky shrugs. He looks younger like this, in one of Bruce's hoodies because he must have gotten cold, leg bouncing. He's taken off his prosthetic and it's sitting on the desk two feet away from him, a knot in the sleeve of his right arm, so that the empty part of the sleeve doesn't drag around. 'I didn't get very far. It's really hard to figure out the language to explain myself. There are things I want to say to her that I can't even put into words.' 

'Does it feel good?' 

'Sort of, I guess? It's easier not to blame myself when I explain it all back to her. Easier to see that she shouldn't have done this, that she was the one in the wrong. It kind of just makes me feel like shit, though.' 

Bruce only nods. Just the thought of addressing his father in a letter makes him feel sick, he can’t imagine actually sitting down in front of a laptop and doing it. 

'You wanna drink more?', Bruce asks. 

Blonsky nods and for a long time, they sit in silence while Bruce drinks a little and Blonsky drinks a lot. He knows that Blonsky is thinking about it, about his childhood, his parents. He knows the memories are even more invasive on a day like this one, but Bruce has no idea what to do about it. 

It's been almost two hours since either of them talked when Blonsky says, 'I want to hurt myself.' 

'Are you sure?', Bruce asks. 

'Yeah. Please. It's been a long time, I swear.' 

'Show me.' 

He unzips his hoodie, then pulls his T-shirt over his head. The scars are hidden where his upper arm presses against the side of his ribcage and when he lifts his arm, the skin on both his arm and down his side is smooth and neatly scarred over. He hasn't hurt himself in months and months. 

'Are you sure?', Bruce asks again. He wants to refuse, wants to threaten Blonsky with kicking him out, but he can't, needs to be sure that Blonsky won't refuse him either, when Bruce needs this on his bad days. 'You've been doing so well.' 

'Please,' is all Blonsky manages. 

Bruce sighs. 'Second degree,' he tries. 'I decide when you stop.' 

'Okay. I just need one. Promise.' 

Bruce gets the olive oil and starts to gather everything else he needs while Blonsky carefully spreads a layer of oil over the scars on his side. 

'That's too big a piece,' Bruce says. A small part is going to hurt plenty and will be less of a risk for infection. Blonsky knows that, but he gets carried away so easily when it comes to this. Bruce hands him a dry towel and he carefully removes almost half of the patch of oil. 

'Do you want something to bite down on, or do you want to scream?' Bruce knows Blonsky would prefer neither, would prefer silence, but he's been doing this for years now and he's never been able to stay quiet. 

'Bite down.' 

Bruce pulls out his belt and gives it to Blonsky, who folds it and puts it between his teeth. 

'Okay. I have everything. Let me check that you didn't get it anywhere it shouldn't be.' 

Blonsky has neatly covered a small patch of skin in oil on the side of his ribcage. He used to only burn himself on the inside of his right upper arm, which is the place his parents noticed least, but since his dad died, he has started to burn himself more and more on his side. It's his preferred place, now. 

Bruce's heart is thumping loudly in his throat. This doesn't ever get easier. The only reason he even stays is because he knows Blonsky would do worse on his own, would let it burn for longer, bigger parts at a time. 

Bruce tries to pretend he's not watching human flesh burn when Blonsky holds the lighter to the oiled patch of skin and it catches fire. He counts down the seconds, knows he has fifteen before he can finally push the wet towel against the flame, fifteen seconds of Blonsky screaming against the belt, making a noise that only Bruce and his parents have ever heard him make. After thirteen seconds, Bruce presses the wet towel to Blonsky’s side, extinguishing the flames. 

The sit close, both panting, as Blonsky's skin cools down enough to stop burning under the towel. Bruce makes Blonsky wait, even when Blonsky insists the wound is good. Once it really is cooled down enough, he covers it in a thick layer of ointment and dresses it carefully. By now he has not just read tons of articles about properly taking care of burns on the internet, he's actually discussed it with doctors and everything. He knows what to do. 

Blonsky drinks more. Bruce does, too, hoping that the alcohol will calm his mind, filled with images of Blonsky's skin on fire. 

Blonsky puts his shirt back on at some point, and then Bruce takes his shirt off because Blonsky wants to talk about his scars again. Blonsky undresses, too, because the alcohol is making him feel too warm and then they sit around wrapped in blankets for the rest of the night, the blankets Tony gave him some time ago. 

They don't sleep, because Blonsky is not on good terms with sleep on the best of days; on days like these, it's definitely out of the question. 

Blonsky rubs more of the supposedly scar-fading oil into Bruce's skin and Bruce tries to explain why his cutting himself is different from Blonsky burning himself, but Blonsky doesn't seem convinced. 

It's not at all different from this same day every other year. Their conversations grow more nonsensical the closer they get to sunrise, but they keep talking anyway because Blonsky needs it. 

They're both sitting on the floor, an empty bottle and an almost-full one between them. 

Bruce tries to convince Blonsky to move to Vermont, which seems like the kind of place people should move to once they've settled down, and then forgets he was talking about Vermont and spends the next half hour talking about Vancouver. Blonsky, who barely moves his lips when he's drunk, mumbles about how settling down is bullshit and marriage is such an intimidating thing, marriage means you won't just forgive your partner for doing bad things, but you'll actively enable and even join them. That's why Bruce and him shouldn't ever get married, they'd murder-suicide the hell out of each other at some point, at which Bruce snorts. It's also why Blonsky and Nathan shouldn't get married, and why Blonsky should never get married at all. 

Bruce doesn't know who Nathan is, but Blonsky keeps talking about him. 'He's such a shit. He knows how fucking much I hate talking about marriage, I get all fucking nervous about it, but he keeps bringing it up. And it sucks because I kind of want it. He still has his parents and they're so nice and even his grandparents are still alive and he has, like siblings and cousins and stuff, and a niece. And I wish I could be part of that, but I can't be. I can't marry him. I'm not - he's gonna want kids next and I'm gonna do everything wrong. Kids are so fragile. So easy to fuck up.' 

'What your parents did you wasn't easy. That's not something you can just do without meaning to.' That's what Bruce always tells himself. Hurting children is much harder than not hurting them. It’s what Blonsky tried to tell him only a couple of hours ago, to some degree.

'But I don't know any other way to deal with kids than how my parents dealt with me.' 

'You do. What about the niece?' 

He scoffs. 'I held her one time and I kind of left right after and drove away and slept in the car for three days without so much as calling Nathan.' 

'Oh. What about other kids? You've never been around kids before?' 

He shakes his head. 

'Have you seen how people treat kids in movies?' 

He barks out a frustrated laugh. 'I never watch movies with kids in them. I hate that.' 

'Oh. You should talk about this with your psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are great with this stuff.' 

'He tells me that I can fix this with, like, exercises and stuff.' 

'Well, you can, right?' 

'Do you think that you can change who you've learned to be for twenty years with just some - like, some cute journaling or whatever?' 

'I don't know. I hope so.' 

'Banner,' Blonsky says, more like a plea than anything else. He's quiet for a while. 'I want Nathan to stop talking about marriage. Because I want to marry him so badly.' 

'I think maybe if you never get married, you'll always think of yourself as someone who is going to be just like his parents if he gets married. But if you do get married, you'll see that you aren't.' 

Blonsky doesn't say anything. 

'What about Nathan? Would he turn out like your parents? Would he allow you to be like them?' 

Blonsky doesn't say anything to that, either. They drink some more. Bruce tries to top up his glass again, but Blonsky stops him. 'That's enough. You're on your meds.' 

It's late enough to be early by now, almost six am. Blonsky lies down on Bruce's bed, on his back, and stares at the ceiling. 

'Can you imagine having kids?', he asks then. 'That must be so crazy. I think I'd die from fear. So much can go wrong.' 

Bruce quietly moves to kneel on the floor by his side and starts redressing his wound, having to lean over to the other side of the bed, since that’s where Blonsky’s right arm is. 

Blonsky tangles his left hand in Bruce's hair. He's not a very tactile person unless they're having sex or he is very tired. He just massages Bruce's scalp with his fingertips and starts humming a song. 

'Can I tell him about you? Can I tell him why I love you so much?' 

Bruce isn't sure what to say to that, but Blonsky ads, 'I've told him that we grew up on the same street. And that your dad hurt you a lot, too. Differently from mine. But I think he wants to know more about you. Can I tell him? I always want to do everything he wants. Because he deserves so much. He deserves everything.' 

'I guess.' 

Blonsky tugs at Bruce's hair until Bruce looks at him. 'You don't want me to.' 

'Well, you know a lot about me, Blonsky. A lot of stuff I don't want anyone to know.' Bruce turns back to the bandages and finishes redressing Blonsky’s wound. He sinks back down until his ass is resting against his heels, leans his head against the mattress so that Blonsky can access his hair more easily.

'But what about the other stuff? I wanna tell him your major and how you fuckin' - like, eat anchovies on pizza, and probably on everything now that I'm not there to stop you, and how you're competitive about really dumb stuff and how getting you into subspace is the hardest and most rewarding thing at the same time. I could write a fucking novel about you, Banner, it would be like a thousand pages even without all the things you don't want him to know.' 

'Shit,' Bruce says, because normally they never talk about this, about how much they mean to each other. 

Blonsky chuckles. 'I'm almost twenty three, now, it's making me sentimental.' His birthday is exactly seven days after the anniversary of his mother's death. 

He tugs on Bruce's hair again and that's starting to get annoying, so Bruce crawls into the bed with him. 

They lie next to each other for some time. Blonsky keeps falling asleep and Bruce keeps pinching him awake, which is the easiest way to wake him up without triggering him. It's weirdly nice, sharing space with Blonsky like this. It reminds him of when they were kids, except now they both live in a place that is safe, and neither of them is being hurt by anyone anymore, and it doesn't seem impossible that they'll still be alive tomorrow, and even the day after that. 

Bruce turns over on his stomach and smiles at Blonsky, who smiles back at him and returns his hand to Bruce's hair. 

'Did I ever tell you about the nights I spent at Betty's?', Blonsky asks. 

He has, but he only ever tells that story when he's drunk and tired and sad like right now, and he never remembers afterwards. Bruce is usually drunk, too, at those times, and doesn't know the story as well as he would want to, so he waits for Blonsky to tell it again. 

'Because of the whole thing with Mark,' - Blonsky's abusive ex, they were only together for a couple of months but in that time, Blonsky had to spend five days in the ICU because of his injuries and he had to go to the ER twice - 'I figured people like us couldn't really escape abuse. Thought that we'd just always end up with people who hurt us, because we're made to be hurt. And so when you and Betty started dating, I'd go to her house sometimes to try and convince her not to hurt you. She always indulged me in this weird-ass rambling I did about you, although I sounded batshit crazy. And she'd get drunk with me and assure me she'd never do anything to hurt you. And I'd be relieved that I had convinced her. And then when I sobered up again, I'd be ashamed that I thought she needed convincing, because why would it even occur to her to hurt you? And then I'd want to get high or fuck someone or something, but I didn't, because I was taking a shitton of medication and I, like, I was doing the whole celibacy thing back then, remember?' 

Bruce nods. Blonsky's hand tightens in his hair. 

'I liked the celibacy. It was really difficult, but I liked never having to feel vulnerable.' 

'Do you and Nathan have sex a lot?' 

Blonsky grins and rubs across Bruce's scalp. 'Sometimes every day, sometimes not for weeks and weeks. Nathan is weird about sex.' 

'Weird how?' 

'Sometimes he doesn't like it and sometimes he does. Do you have a lot of sex with your guy?' 

'Not really. Not even every week.'

‘Is he weird about sex, too?’

‘No, he really loves having sex, I think. If it were up to him, we’d do it a lot more often.’

Blonsky frowns. 'You’ve never had issues with sex before.' 

Bruce looks away, avoiding Blonsky’s gaze. 'I did, just not with you.' 

'Oh, like how you couldn't come in front of people, either? And, like, the kissing thing? And the whole... like, all the general intimacy issues. You still have that?' 

'Yeah.' 

'Banner.' Blonsky sounds sad.

'Shut up.' 

'I don't get why that's a problem for you.' 

Bruce doesn't say anything, angry at Blonsky for continuing to talk about it. 

'You, like, you don't have any sexual trauma, right? So this is other trauma that affects sex or something. Do you talk about this with the psychiatrist?' 

Bruce shakes his head. 'I'm not gonna tell her about my sex life. Her job is just to make sure I'm not aggressive.' 

'She's a psychiatrist. She's not gonna be mad at you for bringing up intimacy issues to her, that's a normal thing for her to treat.' 

'I don't want to talk about it.' 

'But that way it's never gonna get any better.' 

'Shut up.' 

'Seriously. This probably isn't even going to be that hard to get better at, compared to, like, battling depression and stuff. Something's making all this stuff really difficult for you and she can help you figure out what it is.' 

Bruce ignores him. 

'Come on. I know it's not the kind of thing you want to think about too much, but it's only gonna get harder if you let it be like this.' 

He leaves a pause for Bruce to react, but Bruce doesn't. 

'I can't help you with this shit. For like, the first twenty times Nathan and I fucked I had to take a cold shower after because I just couldn't bear the idea that someone making me come would be a good thing. Remember when I did that? I rather had blue balls than an orgasm. I worked through it with the psychiatrist and it got easier and easier, but at first it was really hard, and that's because I'd never actually tried to do anything about it before.' 

Bruce sighs. 'When is your plane?' 

'Four hours. You've never come in front of your guy?' 

'We've only had sex, like, three times. And I have. So it's not like I can't. It just that I need to be in the right mood.' 

'But you know that's not normal, right? Like, of course you need to be in the right mood for sex, but not to have sex like a normal person. You should always be in the mood for that if you're in the mood for sex.' 

'I'm serious. Shut up or I'm gonna kick you out and you can wait for your plane on the fucking sidewalk.' 

'Oh, Banner, don't get upset. That only means I'm right.' 

He looks over Blonsky's shoulder, doesn't want to see his stupid grin. He punches his left shoulder. 'Shut up.' 

Blonsky laughs. 'How are your aunt and uncle?' 

'Good. I called with them yesterday. My aunt asked about you.' 

'What did you say?' 

'That you're still alive. That you've been with someone for almost two years now and it's going really well. She’s happy for you.' 

'Do they know about your guy?' 

Bruce shakes his head. 'It's still too new for that.' 

'When do you think you'd tell them?' 

'Months from now, maybe, if things are still going okay.' 

'Does anyone else know? Like, Betty or someone else?' 

'His friends know.' 

'But none of yours?' 

'No.' 

'That's really stupid, Banner. I'm not gonna be around if things go wrong. Betty is. You should tell her.' 

'No.' 

'Okay, okay.’ Blonsky sighs. ‘You dumbass.' 

Bruce sighs and pushes against Blonsky's shoulder again. 

Bruce gets out of bed, throws off the blanket and starts to get dressed. Blonsky watches him, checking for injuries because he can't help himself. 

Then he pulls off Blonsky's blanket and carefully guides Blonsky into his jeans, then even more carefully into his T-shirt. 

For a while Bruce sits in his desk chair and watches Blonsky, who watches him from the bed. 

'Ten years ago, five, even, I never would have thought I'd get here,' Blonsky says. 'We're twenty, Banner. We're both over twenty. Can you believe that?'

Bruce can, and it’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to get this story to 60 000 words by the eighth of August, but we've gotten there a week later, which is still great. Yay!


	26. Scars II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some smut. I feel like I should also warn for dubcon since it's not always entirely clear if Bruce does what he does because he wants to or because he feels like he should, also warning for someone having a really low opinion of himself and having a really negative self-image (mainly because of scars but also because of a bunch of other stuff this chapter doesn't necessarily deal with). Also a little bit of kinda graphic vomiting. As always, if you want a little more detail to make sure you'll be okay reading this, hit me up at hungryface.tumblr.com!
> 
> This chapter kind of weirds me out because it didn't at all turn out the way I expected, but it also turned out exactly like one of the very first scenes I had drafted for this story, so that's kind of exactly what I should be expecting?
> 
> I'm so glad you're still reading this and I hope you enjoy although this chapter is pretty angsty! But thanks, for reading and stuff!

Bruce is still kind of buzzed when he shows up at Tony’s in the evening, after having dropped Blonsky off at the airport, attended his classes and gone back to his apartment for a while. He’s had only a little bit more to drink, but it hit hard on an empty stomach, and he’s swaying slightly in front of Tony’s apartment door.

‘Hey,’ Tony says as he lets Bruce in and they go up the stairs to Tony’s apartment. ‘How was Blonsky doing?’

‘Good,’ Bruce says. ‘Considering.’

‘Oh, yeah, of course. And how are you?’, Tony asks as he grabs Bruce’s hand to pull him into the apartment when he doesn’t immediately come in once Tony has opened the door. 

‘I don’t know.’

Tony keeps looking at him, still holding his hand even though they’re both inside and Tony has closed the door, and so he explains himself. ‘This morning I was good, now I – I don’t really feel bad, but kind of – I don’t know.’

‘Have you eaten? And slept and stuff? When I feel bad I usually just forgot to eat.’

Bruce shrugs. ‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You are. You’re going to feel better once you eat. I’ll order something. Or I could make something? I got anchovies for you.’

This for some reason makes Bruce’s heart skip with genuine fear and Tony finally lets go of his hand when Bruce pulls away. ‘You got anchovies?’

‘Yeah. I was talking to Betty after class and she said you put anchovies on all your food. So I got anchovies.’

‘No. That’s fine. You didn’t have to do that.’

Tony is still, studying Bruce’s face intently, something sad to his eyes. ‘I’ve never seen you put anchovies on anything.’

Shame makes Bruce’s stomach feel hot and cold at once. Blonsky and Betty both like to make fun of how much he likes anchovies, but he knows it’s gross, that it makes his mouth all smelly and disgusting. He never wanted Tony to know. ‘Tony –‘ Bruce wants to apologise, or convince Tony to never bring up gross stinky anchovies again, or maybe to just sink into the ground and never come up again.

They’re both quiet for a moment, slowly realising that anchovies aren’t a very big deal at all, and Tony laughs, Bruce smiles. 

Tony turns around, walks into the kitchen, starts to rummage through the cabinets until he finds a pot to fill with water. ‘I have tomato sauce and anchovies and pasta, that’s pretty much all you need for puttanesca, right? I don’t have olives or capers, but I’ll just put extra anchovies.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Bruce says from behind him, but Tony ignores him, putting the pot on the stove and going looking for ingredients, standing up on his tiptoes to reach them in the upper cabinets. The topmost shelves are just empty, because Tony wouldn’t be able to reach anything there anyway.

Bruce steps closer, feeling weirdly nervous, although he isn’t sure what part of this he’s nervous about, the prospect of eating or the prospect of smelling of anchovies while he’s with Tony or the idea of Tony doing something for him while Bruce can’t fully appreciate it, still so drunk and already so hungover that eating is out of the question.

He puts his hands on Tony’s hips, presses his lips against his shoulder and Tony stills. ‘Slow down,’ Bruce mumbles against Tony. 

Tony turns his head slightly, and Bruce presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

‘What number are you at?’

‘Three positive.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah. Come on.’

Tony turns off the stove and follows him to the bedroom. Bruce presses a kiss to Tony’s lips, then takes off his sweater and the shirt he’s wearing underneath, even though the apartment isn’t cold at all.

Bruce is pulling off Tony’s pants when Tony says. ‘I was masturbating before you came. So, like, don’t be weirded out that my ass is already kind of ready.’

There’s something exciting about the thought of Tony masturbating, taking care of himself like that, but Bruce tries to stay focused on the task at hand.

When Tony is fully naked, Bruce gives him a little push and Tony takes the hint and settles on the bed while Bruce gets the condoms from inside the bedside table and the lube from on top of the bedside table.

He hands the lube to Tony while he pulls out his cock and rolls on a condom, then kneels on the bed and watches Tony push two fingers inside himself and spread more lube around.

Bruce nudges his own finger against the two Tony already has inside and it fits well enough.

‘Ready?’, he asks Tony.

‘Bruce Banner, are you going to fuck me in the missionary position?’, Tony says with a grin that’s way too excited to fully get the teasing effect he was going for.

Bruce comes to kneel between Tony’s legs and pushes his knees up and apart.

‘Are you going to _make love_ to me in the missionary position,’ Tony says, more mockingly, and Bruce kisses him hard, making Tony giggle against his lips.

Bruce slowly lines himself up and pushes inside and Tony keeps fucking grinning, lets out a breath that turns into a moan halfway. 

After only two thrusts, Bruce pulls out again and stands beside the bed to pull off his pants. Then he gets back in position and thrusts back in, harder this time. Tony’s smile fades into something more earnest but pleasured and he throws his head back, arches his back, clenches the pillows. Bruce leans over him, knees bent and bracketing Tony’s ass, and kisses Tony’s chest, over his breastbone, where the worst of his scars are, drags his teeth over his nipple. One of Tony’s hands comes to rest in Bruce’s hair, holding him in place while Bruce continues to tease his nipples, and then when he moves on to kissing his neck.

He starts to stroke Tony’s cock, hard and tight, and drinks in the resulting moans.

Tony’s muscles clench as he comes, his thighs shaking against Bruce’s sides. ‘Keep going,’ he manages while Bruce mouths at his neck.

He does, a little slower than before, and Tony kisses him on the lips. It feels weird to Bruce, like they’re playing pretend at being a normal couple that fucks like this every other day and has seen each other naked so many times it’s starting to become mundane.

He leans back, still inside Tony, to pull off his shirt.

Tony doesn’t seem to realise what this means, at first, just blinks at Bruce’s bare chest. Then he frowns and turns his head away, eyes shut.

‘What are you doing?’

Bruce feels suddenly like something monstrous, even more so when he takes Tony’s hand, which is stiff and uncooperative, and forcibly puts it against his belly, Tony’s nails digging into the soft flesh there while Tony weakly tries to pull away. ‘I’m showing you my scars,’ he says.

‘You don’t want that.’

‘I do. Please. Look at them.’ He isn’t usually this aware of how disgusting he is, how much he really hates himself. Right now he feels grotesque, especially compared to Tony, so pure and beautiful it hurts.

‘No.’ He still isn’t looking at Bruce. ‘You’re never going to talk to me again.’

He covers Tony’s hand on his abdomen with his own, slides it over the worst one, the slash across his stomach, the one that kept bleeding and bleeding, that bled for so long he got dizzy, as dizzy as he is right now. ‘Come on,’ he says, feeling bad for making Tony do this, making him watch something as horrendous as Bruce against his will, but unable to stop himself. Up until now, everything he’s done with Tony has been a deception on his part, has been him hiding how ugly he really is, how damaged, irreparably so. He can’t keep lying, keep pretending. Tony deserves to know what kind of disgusting thing he has slept with, deserves to be able to choose never to sleep with him again.

Tony does look now, curiosity at feeling the texture having won over. ‘Bruce,’ he says, a sadness to his voice, eyes a little wide. ‘What the fuck.’ His voice is a couple octaves too high. His fingers finally move, trace the scar on their own. Tony swallows audibly. ‘What – Are you sure you want me to see this?’

‘Yeah,’ Bruce manages. He’s nauseous with how nervous this makes him, how disgusted he is with himself, but somehow he’s still hard inside of Tony. ‘Do you still want me to keep going?’

Tony’s hand doesn’t move away from his abdomen, but he’s studying other scars. He gives a distracted nod and moans when Bruce thrusts out and in again, eyes fluttering shut, surely because he can’t enjoy sex while looking at something as gross as Bruce’s patchy chest hair, the scars that are raised and the scars that are sunken, the ones that are a dark, purply brown and the ones that are pale and silvery.

Bruce speeds up his thrusts, thinking if he makes this good, good enough for Tony to keep his eyes closed, Tony might stay, might be able to pretend never to have seen this at all, might let this whole thing they have continue for a little while longer.

But then Tony opens his eyes again, and moves his hand, maybe to push Bruce away, Bruce wouldn’t know, because the next second he pulls out of Tony and bolts, makes it to the bathroom just in time to heave over the toilet bowl. There’s nothing in his stomach except for a Mars bar, which comes out in unrecognisable chunks, and bile, which he watches drip from his lips numbly, his skin too hot and wet with cold sweat. 

He can’t hear Tony behind him, but he can tell from the changing light that he has come to stand in the doorway while Bruce was throwing up. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Bruce manages, without looking up from the toilet bowl. There’s a sick sort of satisfaction curling in his stomach at the thought of his ugly, messed up back on display for Tony to see. The part of him that hates himself most takes pleasure in the knowledge that now Tony can finally see him for the disgusting thing he truly is, that Tony will finally see that Bruce deserves nothing better than to be abandoned.

He wipes his mouth with toilet paper and gets up, pushes past Tony and starts pulling on his clothes, which lie scattered on the rumpled sheets. He goes into the living room to put on his shoes, Tony following quietly, but his hands are shaking so badly that he just stuffs the laces into the sides of his shoes.

Tony still hasn’t said anything, and when Bruce looks at him, his eyes are big and sad. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Bruce says again.

‘You’re really leaving?’, Tony asks. He has put on underwear, but there’s still come on his stomach. He bites on the nail of his index finger.

‘Yes,’ Bruce says.

‘I don’t want you to.’

Bruce doesn’t process that because it doesn’t make any sense. He turns back to the door, puts his hand on the door handle, but is stopped by Tony’s voice again before he can get any further. ‘Please stay.’

‘Why do you say that?’, Bruce asks. There is something shaky, angry in his chest, the thing shame always turns into, and right now, irrationally, it hates Tony even more than it hates Bruce himself.

‘I want you to stay.’

‘Stop saying that!’

‘I mean it.’

Bruce yanks open the door, barrels down the stairs as quickly as his shitty leg can carry him. He’s vaguely aware that Tony follows him, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to be gone right now, he wants to get away from Tony and stop existing until his mind is done screaming at him how ugly, how horrendous he is. He’ll take the anti-aggression meds, so that at least he’ll forget for a while. He’ll feel terrible either way, at least they’ll keep him from remembering some of it.

‘Bruce, come back inside.’ This is Tony, behind him, in the middle of the street. It’s late, later than Bruce anticipated, and a Tuesday. The street is deserted. 

He keeps walking, pulls out of Tony’s grip when Tony tries to stop him with a hand on his shoulder.

‘Stop, Tony. Just get away from me.’

‘No. I don’t want you to be on your own right now. I’m worried. Just come inside with me.’

‘No! Stop! Just let me leave!’

‘At least let me drive you.’

‘Fuck no! I just want to leave. Please.’

Tony’s arms wrap around him from behind and Bruce stops walking, chest heaving. He’s scared to move with Tony this close, scared he’ll accidentally hurt him. ‘You don’t have to come back, but just stay right here for a little moment. Stop freaking out before you make any other decisions.’

‘I’m not freaking out.’

‘Okay. Why are you leaving?’

‘Because I want to.’

‘What would be so bad about staying?’

‘Everything.’

‘That’s not true. I have blankets and heating and Ana’s carrot soup in the freezer, which I’ll heat up for you, and we can watch something on Netflix, like Friends or Spongebob or something. Adventure Time? We could watch a British show, that’s gonna make us look really smart and sophisticated.’

‘Nothing’s ever going to make me look sophisticated,’ Bruce scoffs.

‘I bet you’ve never even watched any British shit before. So you can’t know for sure.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Come on,’ Tony says again, letting go of Bruce and starting to walk back to the apartment. ‘I’m cold.’

When Bruce turns around, he sees that Tony is still in his underwear, barefoot. He catches up with him quickly, and Tony pulls him close, pulling Bruce’s arm around his shoulder as if that will keep him warm. 

Bruce rushes him back into the apartment and Tony runs for the couch, wrapping himself in two blankets before plopping down. ‘Let me get warm before I make the soup, okay?’, he says and Bruce sits down beside him. Tony doesn’t move any closer, probably scared to spook Bruce, so Bruce pulls his feet into his lap, manhandling Tony’s body around on the couch in the process. Tony is smiling as Bruce pulls the blankets down to cover Tony’s feet and massages his toes through them. For a long time this is all that happens, Tony watching Bruce as Bruce watches Tony’s feet and massages the warmth back into them.

‘I’m really sorry about how I acted,’ Bruce says.

‘Did you really want to show me or did you just feel like you should?’

Bruce doesn’t answer. They both know it’s the latter, but he doesn’t want to say that out loud.

‘I hope you know that I don’t care if you ever show me, okay? I sorry I ever even asked. I don’t want to see it unless you want me to see it, and if you never want me to see it, that’s fine. You’re plenty sexy with your clothes on.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, okay?’

‘Yeah, okay. I’ll heat up the soup.’

There’s a quiet kind of peace to watching Tony, who has abandoned his blankets because they kept getting in the way work in the kitchen in his underwear. He is in constant motion as he finds the container of soup in the freezer and struggles to get it into a pot on the stove and stirs it impatiently as it defrosts and heats up. When he hands Bruce a mug filled with soup ten minutes later, it’s scalding hot, but it’s not burnt and it’s not half-frozen anymore, so it’s good in Bruce’s book.

They drink their soup in silence on the couch, the only light the one over the stove in the kitchen. Only once they’re both done does Tony turn on the TV.

‘Have you ever watched House MD?’, Bruce asks.

‘No. Do you like it?’

‘Yeah.’ Bruce only started watching it once he started college, and he’s always found it a comforting kind of show.

‘Then let’s watch that.’

Bruce pulls him against his side, feeling guilty enough about the whole night to touch Tony even though he’s not really up for it. Tony snuggles close, kisses Bruce’s chest.

‘Honestly it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,’ Tony says at length, fingers tracing over Bruce’s chest, over the scars under his clothes. ‘Like, it’s a mess, but it’s not ugly or anything. Just kind of scary. Knowing that you went through all that. Like the one over your stomach. Is that – is it from a long time ago?’

‘I was ten or eleven, I think. I don’t want to tell you how I got it.’

‘Okay. Of course. But I – I care about you, Bruce, and knowing that you ever had to go through pain like that, and fear, really makes me sad.’

Bruce presses a quick kiss to Tony’s brow, which is the part of his face that’s easiest to reach. Tony tilts up his face for another peck, this time on the lips. Bruce sighs when they pull apart, although he doesn’t feel as shitty anymore as he did an hour or even ten minutes ago. 

Tony presses his face against Bruce’s chest again, smiling. ‘You have some sexy fucking chest hair, you know that?’

Bruce awkwardly manoeuvres a blanket over Tony using his arms and his right leg while getting no help from Tony whatsoever. ‘Just fucking go to sleep,’ he tells Tony, who comes up for another short kiss and grins at Bruce before he snuggles even closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from A World Alone by Lorde. Tbh all of Pure Heroine (and now that Melodrama is out that too) was playing while I wrote this AU, so it only makes sense.


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